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TEXT 9. SOURCES OF THE INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAW
1. Treaties, protocols, conventions, etc.
International environmental agreements are generally multilateral (or sometimes bilateral) treaties (a.k.a. convention, agreement, protocol, etc.). The majority of such conventions deal directly with specific environmental issues. There are also some general treaties with one or two clauses referring to environmental issues but these are rarer. There are about 1000 environmental law treaties in existence today; no other area of law has generated such a large body of conventions on a specific topic.
Protocols are subsidiary agreements built from a primary treaty. They exist in many areas of international law but are especially useful in the environmental field, where they may be used to regularly incorporate recent scientific knowledge. They also permit countries to reach agreement on a framework that would be contentious if every detail were to be agreed upon in advance. The most widely known protocol in international environmental law is the Kyoto Protocol.
The main international treaties concerning the environment are:
1. 1972 UN Convention on the Human Environment;
2. 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), which produced the Rio Declaration;
3. 1997 Kyoto Protocol, entered into force on February 16, 2005;
4. 2002 World Earth Summit
2. Customary international law
Customary international law is an important source of international environmental law. These are the norms and rules that countries follow as a matter of custom and they are so prevalent that they bind all states in the world. When a principle becomes customary law is not clear cut and many arguments are put forward by states not wishing to be bound. Examples of customary international law relevant to the environment include the duty to warn other states promptly about icons of an environmental nature and environmental damages to which another state or states may be exposed, and Principle 21 of the Stockholm Declaration ('good neighbourliness' or sic utere).
3. Judicial decisions
International environmental law also includes the opinions of international courts and tribunals. While there are few and they have limited authority, the decisions carry much weight with legal commentators and are quite influential on the development of international environmental law.
The courts include: the International Court of Justice (ICJ); the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS); the European Court of Justice; and regional treaty tribunals. Arguably the World Trade Organization's Dispute Settlement Board (DSB) is getting a say on environmental law also.
Important cases have included:
· the Trail Smelter Arbitration, 33 AJIL (1939)
· the various nuclear weapons testing cases such as between New Zealand and France before the International Court of Justice;
· Gabcikovo-Nagyramos Dam Case, ICJ Rep (1997)