Sustainable Development, International Law, and a Turn to African Legal Cosmologies, Godwin E Dzah
9 May, 16:00
Online
This original book analyses and reimagines the concept of sustainable development in international law from a non-Western legal perspective. Built upon the intersection of law, politics, and history in the context of Africa, its peoples and their experiences, customary law and other legal cosmologies, this ground-breaking study applies a critical legal analysis to Africa's interaction with conceptualising and operationalising sustainable development. It proposes a turn to non-Western legal normativity as the foundational principle for reimagining sustainable development in international law. It highlights eco-legal philosophies and principles in remaking sustainable development where ecological integrity assumes a central focus in the reimagined conceptualisation and operationalisation of sustainable development. While this pioneering book highlights Africa as its analytical pivot, its arguments and proposals are useful beyond Africa. Connecting global discourses on nature, the environment, rights and development, Godwin Eli Kwadzo Dzah illuminates our current thinking on sustainable development in international law.
Bio
Godwin E. K. Dzah is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Alberta. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University; and previously a fellow at the Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea, United Nations Secretariat in New York. His teaching and research specializations include international, comparative, environmental and natural resources law; global corporations; Third World Approaches to International Law,; and law of the sea. He holds a BA and LLB from the University of Ghana and a qualifying certificate in law from the Ghana School of Law. He holds an LLM from Harvard Law School and a PhD in law from the University of British Columbia. He has published widely including in the African Journal of International and Comparative Law, TWAIL Review, the African Human Rights Law Journal, and the Canadian Yearbook on International Law. He is the author of Sustainable Development, International Law, and a Turn to African Legal Cosmologies (Cambridge University Press 2024), and the recipient of the 2025 Certificate of Merit for a Preeminent Contribution to Creative Scholarship awarded by the American Society of International Law.
