International Environmental Law and Community Interests

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jutta Brunnée
Keyword(s):  
Preventive Measures ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Standard Setting ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
Due Diligence ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Strong Emphasis

Strong procedural elements are indispensable for international environmental law’s capacity to serve community interests. Procedural obligations can strengthen the rule concerning the prevention of environmental harm and flesh out its due diligence standard. Procedural obligations can also serve useful purposes when states, or judges, are reluctant to entertain substantive arguments, or find it difficult to establish that environmental harm has been caused. Violations of procedural obligations are more easily established and states can sometimes be prompted to correct harmful conduct or to take more effective preventive measures. Unfortunately, the operation of procedural rules is constrained by the dearth of practice and the continued struggle to define the substance of community obligations and the legal effects of erga omnes norms. Treaty-based approaches have proven better suited to accommodating community concerns, perhaps because they place such strong emphasis on procedural elements and employ increasingly diverse formal lawmaking and informal standard-setting approaches.

Part III Conceptual Pillars, Ch.16 Harm Prevention

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brunnée Jutta
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Law ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
Due Diligence ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Significant Harm ◽  
Actual Harm ◽  
The Face ◽  
Harm Prevention ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter addresses how international environmental law originates from and revolves around the harm prevention rule. It focuses on three points of contention, each related to the role of due diligence in harm prevention, and each highlighted by recent judicial engagements with the harm prevention rule. First, it is generally accepted that a state's obligation to prevent environmental harm is not absolute, but requires due diligence in the face of risk of significant harm. However, it is unclear whether a failure to act diligently to avert harm on its own—absent actual harm—can amount to a breach of the harm prevention rule. Second, the relationship between the procedural and substantive dimensions of the harm prevention rule remains ambiguous. Third, there is some uncertainty as to where the line runs between the harm prevention obligation and the precautionary principle, given the focus of both notions on risk. These inter-related conceptual questions affect the harm prevention rule's function as a reference point for international environmental law.

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.

19. The protection of the environment

2019 ◽  
pp. 494-524
Author(s):  
Gleider Hernández
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Law ◽  
Significant Proportion ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Soft Law ◽  
Due Diligence ◽  
Dense Network ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
Significant Damage ◽  
Conservation Of Endangered Species

This chapter studies the development of international environmental law. A significant proportion of international environmental law obligations is contained in treaties, which often provide for institutional mechanisms or procedural obligations for their implementation. There exists a dense network of treaty obligations relating to environmental protection, and to specific sectors such as climate change, the conservation of endangered species, or the handling of toxic materials. Indeed, though customary international law knows of no general legal obligation to protect and preserve the environment, certain customary rules nevertheless have been found in specific treaties, case law, and occasionally even soft law instruments. The most significant such rule is the principles of prevention, often taking the form of the ‘good neighbour’ principle. States are required to exercise due diligence in preventing their territory from being used in such a way so as to cause significant damage to the environment of another state.

scholarly journals Due Diligence in International Environmental Law and International Human Rights Law: A Comparative Legal Study of the Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement and Positive Obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Medes Malaihollo
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Due Diligence ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
International Human

AbstractDue diligence is a frequently employed notion in international law, yet much is still to be explored about this concept. This article aims to contribute to an understanding of due diligence obligations in international law, which is useful as it can form the basis for a further clarification of corresponding legal rights of subjects of international law. With this purpose in mind, this article initiates the construction of a working model of due diligence in international law by exploring this notion from two perspectives: an accountability perspective and a regulatory perspective. Subsequently, this article will use this model to compare the operation of due diligence obligations in two branches of international law: international environmental law and international human rights law. In doing so, it will become clear that due diligence contains two core elements: ‘reasonableness’ and ‘good faith’. Moreover, it will become apparent that the operation of due diligence obligations in these two branches has implications for systemic issues in international law. Further research on the operation of due diligence obligations in other branches of international law is therefore recommended.

THE PRINCIPLES OF DUE DILIGENCE AND PREVENTION IN INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAW

2016 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 445-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rumiana Yotova
Keyword(s):  
Costa Rica ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Due Diligence ◽  
Pulp Mills ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
International Court Of Justice ◽  
International Court ◽  
San Juan River ◽  
The Icj ◽  
The Antarctic

ON 16 December 2015, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered its judgment in the joined cases of Certain Activities Carried out by Nicaragua in the Border Area (Costa Rica v Nicaragua) and Construction of a Road in Costa Rica along the San Juan River (Nicaragua v Costa Rica), ICJ Reports 2015. These are the latest in a line of cases raising key principles of international environmental law before the ICJ, following Pulp Mills (2010), Aerial Herbicide Spraying and Whaling in the Antarctic (2014).

The 2017 Inter-American Court's Advisory Opinion: changing the paradigm for international environmental law in the Anthropocene

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-50
Author(s):  
Maria Antonia Tigre ◽  
Natalia Urzola
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Law ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
Environmental Damage ◽  
Advisory Opinion ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Healthy Environment ◽  
Environmental Diplomacy ◽  
Legal Arguments ◽  
Extraterritorial Jurisdiction

The state of our environment is continuously deteriorating, and the frame of the ‘Anthropocene’ calls for transformative laws that respond to the current socio-ecological crisis. Since environmental diplomacy has signally failed to respond to current challenges, courts are being confronted with crucial questions that fundamentally address whether existing legal tools are sufficient to ensure human survival. In 2017, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued a landmark Advisory Opinion that goes some way towards answering this question. The Advisory Opinion recognized extraterritorial jurisdiction for transboundary environmental harm; the autonomous right to a healthy environment; and State responsibility for environmental damage within and beyond the State's borders. This article analyzes the legal arguments constructed by the Court, assessing whether, and how, the Opinion changes paradigms of international environmental law.

If you Break it, do you own it?

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dinah Shelton ◽  
Isabelle Cutting
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
State Responsibility ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Legal Obligations ◽  
Law Of Armed Conflict ◽  
The Law

This article examines the extent to which international legal obligations aimed at protecting the environment apply to military activities in peacetime and during armed conflict. The discussion draws on international environmental law, human rights law, the law of armed conflict, and the law of State responsibility in evaluating the extent to which States have a duty to prevent or mitigate environmental harm and remediate or compensate for any such damage caused by their military activities. The article also examines international law on liability for the injurious consequences of lawful activities, to assess whether this equitable doctrine supports shifting the clean-up costs of environmental harm to the acting State even when there is no breach of international law. The article concludes that international law requires measures be taken to prevent environmental harm and could support a claim for remediation or compensation where norms of international law have been breached. It also suggests the need to develop specific rules in peace treaties and status of forces or bases agreements, to address the consequences of environmental harm resulting from military activities.

Due Diligence in International Environmental Law

2020 ◽  
pp. 111-128
Author(s):  
Jorge E. Viñuales
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Due Diligence ◽  
Individual Interest ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Per Se ◽  
State Body

This chapter analyses the duty of due diligence in the field of environmental protection. It provides a fine-grained analysis of the main legal bases for the determination of due diligence in this field. It shows that the progressive recognition of this duty has evolved hand in hand with the recognition of the need to protect the environment per se, and not as a private (whether state or individual) interest that would be protected in a horizontal (tort-like) form. The chapter argues that the consolidation of due diligence thus reflects the deeper transformation of international law from a horizontal inter-state body of norms to an increasingly vertical one, where duties do not merely arise from the interests of other subjects.

Part III Conceptual Pillars, Ch.18 Precaution

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peel Jacqueline
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
Environmental Damage ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Anticipatory Action ◽  
International Environmental Treaties

This chapter describes the concept of precaution in international environmental law, which concerns anticipatory action in response to scientifically uncertain threats of environmental harm. Its most frequently referenced formulation can be found in Principle 15 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development. The Rio Declaration's endorsement of precaution in Principle 15 introduced to international environmental law a new discourse over the appropriate evidentiary foundations of global environmental regulation. The chapter then focuses on four key questions (and attendant debates) regarding precaution that have been critical in understanding its role in international environmental law. These questions concern the meaning of precaution as a conceptual pillar of international environmental law; the legal status of precaution as a principle of international environmental law; the formulation and understanding of precaution evident from international environmental treaties and case law; and the consequences of applying precaution in decision-making concerning threats of environmental damage.

International Standard Setting in Biomedicine – Foundations and New Challenges

2019 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-151
Author(s):  
Silja Vöneky
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Biological Diversity ◽  
Technological Development ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Standard Setting ◽  
Convention On Biological Diversity ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
Gene Drives

This article examines current challenges for a normative framework regulating biomedicine, including those arising from the use of big data and machine learning tools, and from the use of the CRISPR/Cas-9 technology, as for instance gene drives. The article focusses on the question of legitimate standard setting and takes into account both “hard” and “soft” law as well as private rule making. This includes international treaties and declarations in the area of human rights law and environmental law, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, and, more specifically, the UNESCO Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights. The author argues that, as instruments of biotechnology and biomedicine merge, international environmental law has to be interpreted in the light of human rights law. In order to adapt to new challenges, the article calls for a humanisation of international environmental law and, because of the ongoing disruptive technological development, argues that further legitimate standard setting is required. Keywords: Biomedicine, Biotechnology, Gene Drives, Standard Setting, CRISPR/Cas-9, Artificial Intelligence

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