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This study examines differences in how international regimes for the establishment and management of protected areas have been implemented in Norway and Sweden. We focus on regulatory and normative pathways of international influence, which mirror the distinction between legal and non-legal regimes in international environmental law. Sweden and Norway have essentially responded similarly to the regulatory regimes that apply to both countries. The more normative regimes have influenced them in different waysprimarily by strengthening traditional nature conservation norms in Sweden, and norms about sustainable use by local communities in Norway. The findings indicate that the normative pathway is important mainly as a support for domestic policies that correspond to existing national norms and discourses, and they support the proposition that a high degree of regulatory hardness contributes to increase the level and consistency of implementation.

In May 2015, the European Commission withdrew its proposal for a new Regulation on Plant Reproductive Material. For decades, the European Union (EU) has struggled to strike a balance between seed legislation and the rights of farmers to save and exchange seed. The shelving of the draft Regulation was a major setback, given the need for legislative action in the aftermath of the Kokopelli judgment of the Court of Justice of the EU. This article discusses EU seed legislation in light of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. It analyses possible options and dilemmas for Norway in reconciling commitments to promote effective and high‐quality food production in a well‐functioning market, and securing long‐term crop genetic diversity. Norway's association with the internal market through the European Economic Area Agreement, as well as the fact that the Norwegian seed market is small and of scant interest to major seed companies, indicate that Norway enjoys flexibility in policy design. The article finds that EU seed legislation does not allow effective regimes for exchange and use of conservation varieties, possibly at odds with the two treaties and the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality.

This article reviews the potential implications of the Anthropocene for the future development of international law in general, and for its distinct fields of the law of the sea, environmental law, and rules governing genetic resources in particular. Stability is deeply embedded in the fundamentals of international law, where it operates on two levels. One is the conscious objective of working towards legally guaranteed stability in international relations, in turn prone to frequent political change. The other level of stability is implied: it is the assumption, based on human experience so far, of the relatively stable circumstances of the late Holocene. The onset of the Anthropocene and the changes introduced in that underlying element of stability entail the potential for an unprecedented type of tension in interstate relations. This may spill over to and aggravate existing tensions between the territorial integrity of states and territorial claims, coupled with the fact of immense geopolitical differences, on the one hand, and sovereign equality of states as the founding postulate of international law, on the other. The international legal order will always be in search of stability and, ultimately, solutions to facilitate peace and prevent conflict. However, with a fundamental change of the context in which international law operatesand with the challenges increasingly recognized as the consequences of natural, not only political, changenew legal axioms will have to evolve.

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