Branches of international environmental law - Introduction to International Environmental Law - page 140

and different actors. Legal academics and practitioners are increasingly special-
izing in the legislation relating to climate change, biodiversity, or another
specifi c branch of international environmental law. This kind of specialization
allows a lawyer to keep up to date with the development of the international
treaty system and the functioning of the EU and national legal systems.
Compared with the international free trade rules, for example, international
environmental law is an incoherent body of international regulation related to
the protection and usage of the environment. Free trade rules are made inter-
nally coherent by the WTO decision-making bodies and its automatic dispute
settlement mechanism which keep the rules fairly coherent and predictable.
International environmental law, for its part, is guided by a vast number of
different intergovernmental organizations and global and regional agreements;
their bodies and meetings of the parties often produce overlapping and partly
contradicting decisions and rules. The International Court of Justice established
a division specifi cally to process environmental disputes but governments were
unwilling to rely on it. Perhaps the most important body for the discussion of
international environmental problems and the promotion of solutions is the
UN Environment Programme (UNEP), but it is merely a UN programme -
not even a UN specialized agency - and it lacks the resources and competence
to coordinate the fragmented fi eld of international environmental law. Every
now and then, the idea of a world environmental organization is proposed;
such an organization could unify the diffuse fi eld of international environmen-
tal law in the same way that the WTO unifi es international trade law. However,
there seems to be little political will for the founding of such an organization
(see Chapter 7 , 'A world environmental organization (WEO)', pp. 195-197).
As we saw earlier, different textbook authors divide international environ-
mental law into branches in different ways. Birnie, Boyle and Redgwell
organize the branches of international environmental law by biospheric
sections: 'climate change and atmospheric pollution', 'the law of the sea and
protection of the marine environment', and 'international watercourses: envi-
ronmental protection and sustainable use'. They also discuss the conservation
of biological diversity generally, in land areas, and separately at sea; 'interna-
tional regulation of toxic substances', 'nuclear energy and the environment',
and 'international trade and environmental protection' are discussed separately.
Philippe Sands mostly organizes the branches according to similar lines:
atmosphere, seas and fresh water resources have chapters of their own, as do
biological diversity and hazardous substances and activities. Unlike Birnie
et al ., Sands discusses human rights and armed confl icts, rules applied to waste,
the polar regions, and the environmental law of the European Union as sepa-
rate divisions of international environmental law.
Some of the segments of international environmental law are easier to iden-
tify as sub-branches than others. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea
forms an excellent basis for a coherent regulatory system related to the pollu-
tion of the marine environment, as its Chapter XII covers all sources of marine
contamination, albeit on a general level. Similarly, the Biodiversity Convention