Environmental Rule of Law, Climate Justice, and Governance in Planetary Crisis Conditions

Abstract

The accelerating climate crisis has intensified pressure on legal and governance systems to respond to ecological harm through more coherent and accountable frameworks. At the same time, climate justice has emerged as a central concern because environmental harm increasingly intersects with human rights, state responsibility, and institutional legitimacy. This article aims to examine environmental rule of law as a unifying framework through which climate justice can be understood under conditions of planetary crisis. The study applies a qualitative normative-conceptual design centered on doctrinal and analytical interpretation. Its analysis reconstructs the internal relationship between environmental rule of law, human rights, state obligation, ecological protection, and institutional legitimacy. The discussion is developed through close reading and conceptual mapping of the core legal dimensions that structure climate justice claims across national and international settings. This qualitative approach is used because the research problem concerns legal coherence, normative integration, and governance logic rather than measurement or causal testing. Environmental rule of law is positioned as an essential legal framework that gives climate justice claims greater coherence, authority, and enforceability across fragmented governance domains. Climate justice is therefore better understood not as an external moral demand, but as a legally grounded governance claim embedded in a broader rule-based order. The article contributes to the field by clarifying the conceptual foundation that links law, justice, accountability, and ecological governance in contemporary climate debate.