New Ways to Make International Environmental Law

1992 ◽  
Vol 86 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Palmer
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Political Will ◽  
Environmental Challenges ◽  
The World ◽  
Environment And Development

The purpose of this article is to suggest new ways to make international law for the environment. The existing methods are slow, cumbersome, expensive, uncoordinated and uncertain. Something better must be found if the environmental challenges the world faces are to be dealt with successfully. Nearly twenty years after the Stockholm Declaration, we still lack the institutional and legal mechanisms to deal effectively with transboundary and biospheric environmental degradation. The 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development presents an opportunity to make progress. Unfortunately, my reading of the situation in late 1991 suggests that there is no political will to take decisions that will give us the tools to do the job.

scholarly journals A Global Environmental Constitution for the Anthropocene?

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis Kotzé
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Regulatory Reform ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
The World ◽  
Un General Assembly

AbstractInternational environmental law (IEL) has been unable to respond effectively to the Anthropocene’s global socio-ecological crisis, which is critically existential and requires radical interventions and regulatory reform. This article explores the potential of the recent United Nations (UN)-backed initiative to adopt a Global Pact for the Environment as an opportunity to reform IEL. It does so by (i) reflecting on the Anthropocene’s demands for a constitutionalized form of IEL through the lens of global environmental constitutionalism; (ii) investigating the extent to which the Global Pact could contribute to such a vision; and (iii) suggesting ways in which to strengthen the constitutional potential of the Global Pact in this endeavour. To this end, the article revisits the World Charter for Nature of 1982, which seems to have slipped off the radar in academic as well as policy circles. A case is made for renewed support of the Charter – which already enjoys the backing of the majority of UN General Assembly member states, and which has constitutional qualities – to serve as a ‘best-practice’ example during the ensuing negotiation of the Global Pact.

Locating Nature: Making and Unmaking International Law: Introduction

2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 571-572 ◽  
Author(s):  
KISHAN KHODAY ◽  
VANESSA LAMB ◽  
TYLER MCCREARY ◽  
KARIN MICKELSON ◽  
USHA NATARAJAN ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Sustainable Livelihoods ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Behavioural Patterns ◽  
The World

Environmental harm is of increasing concern to peoples and states all over the world, whether in relation to ensuring access to healthy air, water, food, and sustainable livelihoods, or coping with the diversity of challenges posed by changing climates and ecologies. While international lawyers have focused on crafting solutions to environmental problems, less attention is paid to the disciplinary role in fostering harmful and unsustainable behavioural patterns. Environmental issues are usually relegated to the specialized field of international environmental law. This project explores instead the role of nature in the general discipline, arguing that the natural environment is a determinative factor in shaping international law, and that assumptions about nature lie at the heart of disciplinary concepts such as sovereignty, development, economy, property, and human rights.

The Evolution of International Environmental Law

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter H. Sand
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
Environmental Regimes ◽  
Environment And Development ◽  
Laws And Policies ◽  
Stockholm Conference ◽  
Modern Era

Close interaction with national laws and policies has been the major driving force for innovation in international environmental law to the point where economists have noted with some perplexity the ‘non-ergodic world’ of environmental regimes, which is subject not only to unforeseeable natural and technological changes, but also teeming with regulatory approaches that are new, often divergent, and competing. Most descriptions of the historical evolution of international environmental law distinguish three or four major ‘periods’ or ‘phases’: the ‘traditional era’ until about 1970 (preceding the 1972 United Nations Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment), which is sometimes sub-divided into a pre-1945 and a post-1945 period; the ‘modern era’ from Stockholm to the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro; and the ‘post-modern era’ after Rio. This article discusses developments in treaties during the modern era, along with developments in dispute settlement and national law, and the development of international environmental law as a discipline.

scholarly journals TRANSBOUNDARY ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION: UNDERSTANDING THE INTRICACIES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kshitij Bansal
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
International Agencies ◽  
The World ◽  
International Environmental Problems ◽  
Legal Controls

Faced with the enormity and urgency of international environmental problems the world has experienced a political awakening. Although environmental issues are not new for international relations, world leaders have increasingly brought environmental issues from the sidelines to the centre of their negotiation agendas. International conferences and treaties regarding global warming and ozone depletion are but few signs that the world has entered a new age of environmental diplomacy in which environmental issues will share centre-stage with more traditional economic and military concerns. In response to this concern governments, legislatures, and the courts have produced a labyrinth of draft bills, amendments to existing legislation, regulations, drafts of international treaties, and judicial decisions, all creating legal controls of pollution. In order to ascertain scientific information and technological data royal commissions, presidential enquiries, governmental departments, and international agencies have undertaken extensive research programs. Paralleling these developments, international environmental law has started to become a new and an emerging academic discipline. A growing number of commentators, diplomats, and practitioners are concentrating on transboundary and global environmental issues. There has also been a significant increase in the number of law schools all over the world that have started focussing towards this subject. The regime of international environmental law is mainly composed of treaties, customs; general principles of international law and opinio juris. In an attempt to use customary international law to protect the environment, commentators have spent the last two decades in elaborating the rules of state responsibility and liability specifically to address the issues related to transboundary pollution. States have begun to build on this liability regime towards the development of international agreements designed to prevent harmful environmental activity.

scholarly journals EISIL: A Gateway To International Environmental Law On The Web

2005 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-273
Author(s):  
Jill Watson
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Electronic Information ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Society ◽  
Improve Access ◽  
Electronic Information System

Let me start with a very Brief History of Electronic Information System for International Law (EISIL). More than five years ago, the American Society of International Law (ASIL) began exploring how to bring its expertise and resources to bear on efforts to sort out and improve access to international law information on the World Wide Web. ASIL received funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2000 to build an international law information gateway and began the process of assessing how this might be accomplished.

Part II Analytical Approaches, Ch.11 Global South Approaches

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Atapattu Sumudu
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Economic Model ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Global South ◽  
Tipping Points ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Vulnerable Communities ◽  
The North ◽  
The World ◽  
Analytical Approaches

This chapter details the global South approaches to international environmental law. It first discusses the colonial origins of international law before tracing the evolution of international environmental law and the North-South divide. The chapter then looks at global South perspectives on international environmental law, including principles and frameworks adopted to address the North-South divide. It considers the potential and limits of these perspectives. Ultimately, the chapter argues that unless and until the neoliberal economic model based on capitalism is discarded in favour of a more ecologically friendly model that accommodates the needs of the global South, especially their vulnerable communities, not only will current North-South tensions be exacerbated, the world will also speedily move towards environmental tipping points from which there is no hope of return.

International Environmental Law

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald K. Anton
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
Progressive Development ◽  
The World ◽  
International Law Commission ◽  
Law Commission

International custom “as evidence of a general practice accepted as law”, is considered one of the two main sources of international law as it primarily derives from the conduct of sovereign States, but is also closely connected with the role of the international judge when identifying the applicable customary rule, a function it shares with the bodies in charge of its codification (and progressive development), starting with the International Law Commission. Though mainly considered to be general international law, international custom has a complex relationship with many specific fields of law and specific regions of the world. The editor provides comprehensive research published in the last seven decades, invaluable to everyone interested in the field of customary international law.

scholarly journals The Trees Speak for Themselves: Nature’s Rights Under International Law

2021 ◽  
pp. 633
Author(s):  
Samantha Franks
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Universal Declaration ◽  
Soft Law ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Current State ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The United Nations

This note argues that the United Nations should center nature’s rights in the upcoming Global Pact on the Environment, solidifying the patchwork of international environmental law and encouraging domestic protection of the environment. Part II explores the current state of international environmental law, outlining the ways in which the doctrine remains incomplete. Part III establishes that Earth jurisprudence is an effective method to fill the gaps existing within traditional international environmental law. Part IV emphasizes the importance of soft law in international law. It draws a parallel between the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human’s Rights and a potential global Declaration of Nature’s Rights, thus establishing the possibility for a path forward for the Global Pact. Part V concludes.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document