Principles of International Environmental Law

Environmental protection requires that due consideration be given to the potential consequences of environmentally fateful decisions. Chamber of Commerce have integrated environmental considerations into their decision-making processes through environmental-impact-assessment mandates and other provisions.

Decisions about environmental protection often formally integrate the views of the public. Generally, government decisions to set environmental standards for specific types of pollution, to permit significant environmentally damaging activities, or to preserve significant resources are made only after the impending decision has been formally and publicly announced and the public has been given the opportunity to influence the decision through written comments or hearings. In many countries citizens may challenge in court or before administrative bodies government decisions affecting the environment.

These citizen lawsuits have become an important component of environmental decision making at both the national and the international level.

Public International Law: International Environmental Law

Public participation in environmental decision making has been facilitated in Europe and North America by laws that mandate extensive public access to government information on the environment. During the s the Internet became a primary vehicle for disseminating environmental information to the public. Sustainable development is an approach to economic planning that attempts to foster economic growth while preserving the quality of the environment for future generations. Despite its enormous popularity in the last two decades of the 20th century, the concept of sustainable development proved difficult to apply in many cases, primarily because the results of long-term sustainability analyses depend on the particular resources focused upon.

For example, a forest that will provide a sustained yield of timber in perpetuity may not support native bird populations, and a mineral deposit that will eventually be exhausted may nevertheless support more or less sustainable communities. Sustainability was the focus of the Earth Summit and later was central to a multitude of environmental studies. One of the most important areas of the law of sustainable development is ecotourism. Although tourism poses the threat of environmental harm from pollution and the overuse of natural resources, it also can create economic incentives for the preservation of the environment in developing countries and increase awareness of unique and fragile ecosystems throughout the world.

In the World Conference on Sustainable Tourism, held on the island of Lanzarote in the Canary Islands , adopted a charter that encouraged the development of laws that would promote the dual goals of economic development through tourism and protection of the environment. Highlighting the growing importance of sustainable tourism, the World Tourism Organization declared the International Year of Ecotourism.

Although numerous international environmental treaties have been concluded, effective agreements remain difficult to achieve for a variety of reasons. Because environmental problems ignore political boundaries, they can be adequately addressed only with the cooperation of numerous governments, among which there may be serious disagreements on important points of environmental policy.

Environmental law - Principles of environmental law | www.newyorkethnicfood.com

Furthermore, because the measures necessary to address environmental problems typically result in social and economic hardships in the countries that adopt them, many countries, particularly in the developing world, have been reluctant to enter into environmental treaties. Since the s a growing number of environmental treaties have incorporated provisions designed to encourage their adoption by developing countries. Such measures include financial cooperation, technology transfer, and differential implementation schedules and obligations.

The greatest challenge to the effectiveness of environmental treaties is compliance. Although treaties can attempt to enforce compliance through mechanisms such as sanctions, such measures usually are of limited usefulness, in part because countries in compliance with a treaty may be unwilling or unable to impose the sanctions called for by the treaty. In general, the threat of sanctions is less important to most countries than the possibility that by violating their international obligations they risk losing their good standing in the international community. Enforcement mechanisms other than sanctions have been difficult to establish, usually because they would require countries to cede significant aspects of their national sovereignty to foreign or international organizations.

In most agreements, therefore, enforcement is treated as a domestic issue, an approach that effectively allows each country to define compliance in whatever way best serves its national interest. Despite this difficulty, international environmental treaties and agreements are likely to grow in importance as international environmental problems become more acute.

Many areas of international environmental law remain underdeveloped. Although international agreements have helped to make the laws and regulations applicable to some types of environmentally harmful activity more or less consistent in different countries, those applicable to other such activities can differ in dramatic ways. Because in most cases the damage caused by environmentally harmful activities cannot be contained within national boundaries, the lack of consistency in the law has led to situations in which activities that are legal in some countries result in illegal or otherwise unacceptable levels of environmental damage in neighbouring countries.

This problem became particularly acute with the adoption of free trade agreements beginning in the early s. Meanwhile, in Europe concerns about the apparent connection between free trade agreements and environmental degradation fueled opposition to the Maastricht Treaty , which created the EU and expanded its jurisdiction. We welcome suggested improvements to any of our articles. You can make it easier for us to review and, hopefully, publish your contribution by keeping a few points in mind. Your contribution may be further edited by our staff, and its publication is subject to our final approval.

Unfortunately, our editorial approach may not be able to accommodate all contributions. Our editors will review what you've submitted, and if it meets our criteria, we'll add it to the article. Please note that our editors may make some formatting changes or correct spelling or grammatical errors, and may also contact you if any clarifications are needed.

The precautionary principle As discussed above, environmental law regularly operates in areas complicated by high levels of scientific uncertainty. The prevention principle Although much environmental legislation is drafted in response to catastrophes , preventing environmental harm is cheaper, easier, and less environmentally dangerous than reacting to environmental harm that already has taken place.

The integration principle Environmental protection requires that due consideration be given to the potential consequences of environmentally fateful decisions.

The public participation principle Decisions about environmental protection often formally integrate the views of the public. Sustainable development Sustainable development is an approach to economic planning that attempts to foster economic growth while preserving the quality of the environment for future generations. Current trends and prospects Although numerous international environmental treaties have been concluded, effective agreements remain difficult to achieve for a variety of reasons.

Federico Cheever Celia I. Campbell-Mohn Previous page Introduction. IEL covers topics such as population, biodiversity, climate change, ozone depletion, toxic and hazardous substances, air, land, sea and transboundary water pollution, conservation of marine resources, desertification, and nuclear damage. For more information and a good introduction to the topic, see:.

UNEA feeds directly into the General Assembly and has universal membership of all UN member states as well as other stakeholder groups. With this wide reach into the legislative, financial and development arenas, the new body presents a ground-breaking platform for leadership on global environmental policy.

A useful and concise summary of the importance and impact of the Stockholm and Rio declarations can be found on the UN website. This is arranged alphabetically and also by subject.

Current trends and prospects

Treaties generally concern one of the following broad subjects: Many of the major treaties have their own websites, containing convention documentation such as backgrounds to the conventions, draft articles and travaux preparatoires, convention protocols and national reports. The UN Audiovisual Library of International Law website lists the following major IEL treaties, and provides the full text of the treaties and travaux, together with useful introductory summaries:.

The Australian Treaty Database on the DFAT website can be searched by subject and lists all environmental treaties to which Australia is a party, as well as information about the treaty process and adoption into domestic law.

• The Women Who Reconstructed American Jewish Education, 1910-1965 (HBI Series on Jewish Women).
• Singing It.
• Snowboard Champ!

There is no international court for the environment. Environmental disputes have been litigated before a wide range of adjudicative bodies - global and regional, judicial and arbitral. Many multilateral environmental regimes have 'non-compliance procedures' which are typically non-judicial. The ICJ is a court of general jurisdiction that provides Advisory Opinions and decides contententious cases.

Inter-State litigation is based on the remedial principle of 'State Responsibility' or international tort law. It includes PDF replicas of documents in any discipline of law which addresses climate change, including corporate law, environmental law and human rights law. Literature in the collection originates from a world wide range of organisations and institutions. The collection is edited by the Human Rights Internet in Ottawa. It contains documents from onwards and is updated annually. The collection can be searched or browsed by broad topic, and then narrowed by eg: Ecolex - the Gateway to Environmental Law.

This free online database provides full text access to treaties and environmental law cases in international courts, and an index to books and journal articles on international environmental law topics.

• International Environmental Law - Public International Law - LibGuides at University of Melbourne;
• A Short, Easy History of the Russian Revolution!
• Child.
• .
• .
• Viaggio in Italia - gli anni di piombo (Italian Edition).