scholarly journals Treaty-Making and Treaty Evolution

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Gehring
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Normative Development ◽  
Single Output ◽  
Environmental Treaty ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Law ◽  
Law Making ◽  
Institutional Fragmentation

This article examines how the establishment and operation of environmental treaty systems helps to create and develop international environmental law. It inquires into the emergence of environmental treaty systems and identifies two characteristics of the evolving law-making structure: first, the ‘constitutionalisation’ of treaty systems through the creation of new structures for the making of international environmental law, and, second, the institutional fragmentation of international environmental governance. The article then considers the policy-making dimension of environmental treaty systems and identifies three areas of intra-institutional activity relevant to the law-making process: broadening and tightening commitments over time; elaborating upon, and in some cases redefining, existing obligations through an administrative process; and undertaking scientific and technical assessments to reinforce and accelerate normative development. It also explores the output of the law-making process, arguing that different types of law emerge. Whereas regular treaty law is still the most important single output of environmental law-making, it is supplemented by law emerging from simplified amendment procedures and secondary decisions of competent treaty bodies.

The Oxford Handbook of International Environmental Law

2008 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Policy Development ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Hazardous Substances ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Normative Development ◽  
International Dispute ◽  
Analytical Tools

This book takes stock of the major developments in international environmental law, while exploring the field's core assumptions and concepts, basic analytical tools, and key challenges. It aims to strike a balance between practical preoccupations and critical or theoretical reflection. Each chapter examines an issue that is central to scholarly debates or policy development. The book consists of forty-seven chapters in seven parts. Part I sets the stage, identifying overarching issues. Part II offers readers a range of theoretical lenses through which to analyse both the problems facing international environmental law and the solutions it may offer. Part III reviews the treatment of basic-issues areas. Part IV analyses the process of normative development in international environmental law. Part V assesses key theoretical concepts. Part VI examines the roles of various actors and institutions, and Part VII analyses issues of implementation and enforcement. Topics range from global environmental governance as administration and its implications for international law, science and technology, international relations theory, ethics and international environmental law, ecosystems and sustainable development, hazardous substances and activities, and international dispute settlement.

Sources of International Environmental Law

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jutta Brunnée
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Law ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
International Court Of Justice ◽  
Stable Law ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Court Of Justice ◽  
International Court ◽  
The Law ◽  
Law Making

This chapter begins by outlining an alternate, ‘interactional’, understanding of the concept of ‘sources of law’, which it takes to refer to processes that are shaped by requirements of legality and through which legal norms are made and remade. This approach does not entail that the law-making methods listed in Article 38 of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) Statute have ceased to matter in international environmental law (IEL)—far from it. The interactional law framework takes seriously what international actors do. The chapter, therefore, explores the law-making processes listed in Article 38 in turn, and then moves on to consider newer processes. The interactional framework and its practice-based understanding of legality illuminate the existence of resilient and relatively stable law-making processes as well as the emergence of new law-making processes.

Part IV Normative Development, Ch.24 Multilateral Environmental Treaty Making

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bodansky Daniel
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Law ◽  
International Environmental Agreements ◽  
Environmental Agreements ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Normative Development ◽  
Regulatory Processes ◽  
Environmental Regimes ◽  
Environmental Treaty ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
International Instruments

This chapter reflects on multilateral environmental treaty making. From its inception, international environmental law has consisted primarily of treaties and other forms of negotiated instruments, which offer several advantages over more informal mechanisms of international cooperation. Traditionally, treaties were comparatively static arrangements, memorializing the rights and duties of the parties as agreed at a particular point in time. Today, environmental agreements are usually dynamic arrangements, establishing ongoing regulatory processes. The result is that, in most environmental regimes, the treaty text itself represents just the tip of the normative iceberg. Most norms are adopted through more flexible techniques, which allow international environmental law to respond quickly to the emergence of new problems and new knowledge. The chapter then introduces the basic types of international instruments, analysing why states negotiate and accept them. It describes the process by which agreements are created, from the inception of negotiations to the adoption and entry into force of the resulting instrument. The chapter also explores various design issues in developing international environmental agreements.

Part VI Actors, Ch.39 Sub-National Actors

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Osofsky Hari M
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Environmental Problems ◽  
Voluntary Agreements ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
International Environmental Governance ◽  
Nation States ◽  
International Environmental Problems ◽  
Law Making

This chapter explores the evolving role of sub-national actors in international environmental law. As a matter of formal law, international environmental law is formed among sovereign nation-states; sub-national actors are treated as sub-units of their nation-states. However, sub-national actors, through transnational networks, are playing a growing role in international environmental governance. The chapter focuses on three aspects of sub-national actors' participation in international environmental law. First, it considers why including sub-national actors is crucial to solving international environmental problems. Second, it examines the emergence of networks interacting with international environmental law-making and each other at transnational, national, and sub-national scales. Third, it analyses how those networks interact directly with the formal processes of international environmental law-making and develop the parallel voluntary agreements in which sub-national actors pledge to uphold commitments made by nation-states.

UNGA as the Anchor: Global Environmental Conferencing

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nele Matz-Lück ◽  
Liv Christiansen
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Institution Building ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Agenda 2030 ◽  
United Nations General ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Rules And Principles ◽  
United Nations General Assembly

The global environmental conferences convened by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) during the last fifty years have contributed to the development of international environmental law and institution-building. Yet, given the deteriorating state of the global environment they are but one element of international environmental governance. While they were important to bring environmental issues to the attention of states, the time for agenda-setting seems over. Rather the international community must move on to the implementation of existing binding and non-binding rules and principles. While the UNGA continues to play an important role in the context of sustainable development and the Agenda 2030 process and is, indeed a stable platform for international cooperation on environmental issues, it seems that the time for comprehensive global environmental conferences may have come to an end, unless more innovative mechanisms for the implementation of international environmental law and policy are brought forward.

International Environmental Law-Making1

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bharat H. Desai
Keyword(s):  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Critical Time ◽  
Scientific Uncertainty ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Political Realities ◽  
Law Making

The article seeks to make a modest effort in making sense of the international environmental law-making process. It comprises the subtle normative process currently at work, including ‘global conferencing’ technique resorted to by the UN General Assembly, how it draws upon the basic legal underpinnings of international law, the unique treaty-making enterprise at work, and what this enormous legal churning process portends for the protection of the global environment at this critical time of perplexity in the Anthropocene epoch. It calls for taking serious cognizance of mass destruction of plant and animal species, heavy pollution of fresh water resources, choking of the oceans with plastic and other litter, and alteration of the atmosphere, among other lasting impacts that imperil our only abode Earth. International environmental law-making process is ad hoc and piecemeal and is generally understood to be the product of a lack of a single, central specialized institution having expertise on the subject, scientific uncertainty on many environmental issues, and the hard-headed economic interests of sovereign states. Still, the international environmental law-making process with its inherent resilience could possibly be able to adapt to the vagaries of scientific assessments and the political realities of in the future.

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