Is Environmental Law Hopeful?

This article examines the place of hope in environmental law and environmental law scholarship at a time marked by ecological crisis and ongoing questions about how these conditions should be addressed in teaching and research. Situating the analysis within the emerging interdisciplinary field of hope studies, it asks a seemingly simple question: is environmental law hopeful? While there is no straightforward answer, the article explores some of the ways in which hope may be relevant in this context. It proposes two complementary orientations. First, thinking towards hope treats hope as an object of inquiry, examining how hope appears and operates in environmental law through both ‘eventful’ moments, such as landmark decisions or emergency declarations, and more durable, ‘institutionalised’ forms, including legislated targets and constitutional directive principles. Secondly, thinking from hope explores hope as a mode of engagement with environmental law, understood as a method and possible responsibility, shaping the style, tone and character of environmental law scholarship. Together, these perspectives suggest that hope works on more levels, and in more forms, than is usually recognised, challenging narrow understandings of hope as illusory or merely expressive, and foregrounding its connection to sustained commitment in the absence of guarantees.