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TEXT 3. WHAT IS INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAW?
International environmental law (IEL) or international ecological law, is a branch of international law representing the aggregate of norms and principles of international law that regulate the activity of its subjects in the direction of preventing and removing damage to the environment from different sources and in the direction of the rational management of the environment for the sake of the present and future human generations.
The formation of the IEL branch has proceeded since the 19th century and has passed through several stages in its development. There are three stages of IEL formation and development: 1839–1948; 1948–1972; 1972–the present. The first stage linked to the first attempts of “civilized” states to solve regional and local ecological problems; the second stage is connected with the start of the UN activity; the third stage marks the holding of global international conferences concerning these questions.
The sources of IEL branch are norms of the international environmental agreements, and international practice. The IEL branch has not been codified. In the source system, the norms of regional international agreements are the dominant ones. The most important sources are such agreements, as UN Framework Convention on Climate Change 1992, International Tropic Timber Agreements 1994, Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer 1985, Convention on Biodiversity 1992.
IEL development and functioning is built on specific fundamental regulations that are kind of juridical axioms in the relatively mobile substance of international law–principles.
IEL has two types of basic principles: 1) fundamental principles of international law; 2) specific IEL principles.
The fundamental principles of international law include the principles stated in the UN Charter, the UN Declaration of Principles 1970, the Helsinki Final Act 1975, and the principles worked out by international legal practice. These are basically the fundamental principles of international law: the sovereign equality, the fulfilment in good faith the obligations, the non-usage of force and threats, settling international disputes by peaceful means and others.
Specific international environmental law principles are developing category. These principles have not been fixed in any codified form yet; they are scattered over a number of international legal documents having a mandatory (international agreements) as well as recommendatory (soft law) character. Such diversity causes some uncertainty in the positions of international lawyers concerning the questions about the number of international environmental law principles.
Usually the following international environmental law principles are emphasized: preventing environmental pollution, the rational management of natural resources, the precautionary approach, the freedom to research and to use the environment and its components, the polluter pays.
International legal regulation of environmental conservation is different from component to component of the environment: conservation of waters, air, soils, forests, flora, fauna and etc. Consequently there are different international legal institutions within the international environmental law sphere: international legal air conservation, international legal animal conservation, and others.
Environmental law is a body of law - a system of complex and interlocking statutes, common law, treaties, conventions, regulations, and policies - that seeks to moderate or eliminate the actual or projected harm to the natural environment resulting from human activities. Environmental law as a distinct system arose in the 1960s in the major industrial economies as it was becoming clear that the cumulative negative environmental effects of human activities were becoming unsustainable in the long term. This new field of law has often been hampered by a lack both of institutions and of a common public will supporting enforcement of the laws.
Environmental law rests on the recognition of a new relation of humans with the environment, a relation in which humans explicitly value the biosphere, no longer assuming that the environment's natural capital can be either freely consumed or freely used for the dumping of wastes. The emergence of environmental law in the twentieth century marks a fundamental shift in human consciousness toward the recognition ultimately that humanity is one family bound together on one planet and jointly responsible to use the environment without destroying it. With many people still committed to their right to freely exploit the environment to their own needs without regard for larger, cumulative effects, environmental law and the institutions supporting its enforcement are still under development.
Environmental laws may aim to regulate policy locally, statewide (or in the province), nationally, or internationally. International environmental law is a subset of environmental law and refers to the body of international law that concerns the protection of the global environment.
Environmental law is one of several methods of protecting the environment. Other avenues include environmental education, the use of economic incentives (ecotourism, debt exchange for conservation), and a paradigm shift in the way businesses value and optimize the use of the full spectrum of environmental resources, including air, water, and land. Utilizing humanity's religious traditions and spiritual dimension offers another avenue for advancing environmental protection, as people can be encouraged to be stewards of creation even when there is no law or no one is watching.
As with each method of protecting the environment, the use of environmental law has its shortcomings. For one, laws and regulations can lack effectiveness due to the difficulty of law enforcement. For example, the Pantanal - an immense wetland located in South America - is protected by many environmental regulations; however, there often is poor enforcement of those regulations given the region's remoteness and vast size. In addition, environmental laws and regulations are often enacted subsequent to undesirable consequences that have already occurred. Many environmental regulations have been enacted worldwide to protect wetlands; however, this comes after about 50 percent of the world's wetlands have already been destroyed.
Environmental law has been criticized for restricting the rights of private property and even contravening national sovereignty; implicit in such laws is the view that protecting the environment is a public responsibility to which lesser private and national interests must bend. The interdependence of all creatures (including humans) in the web of life requires an ethic of "shared ownership," linking private rights with public responsibility to the environment; and by the same token, linking the sovereignty of nations with the greater responsibility to protect the planet Earth.