Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Improving international environmental governance
International environmental law is governed by a diverse array of different
intergovernmental organizations and international global and regional treaties.
Their bodies and meetings of the parties produce both overlapping and some-
times contradictory decisions and rules. The UN International Court of Justice
established a specifi c Chamber in which to process environmental disputes,
but even when submitting an environmental dispute to the International
Court of Justice, states were unwilling to resort to it. The UN Environment
Programme (UNEP) has perhaps been the most signifi cant body to take up
and promote the settlement of international environmental problems, but it is
only a UN programme - not even a UN specialized agency - and it lacks the
resources and the competence to coordinate the fragmented fi eld of interna-
tional environmental law. The idea of a world environmental organization
corresponding to the WTO that could unify the highly fragmented fi eld of
international environmental law has been proposed time and again. However,
there is just not suffi cient political will to establish such an organization.
One of the most high-profi le aspects of the Rio +20 preparatory process
was the debate regarding the institutional changes required to enhance the
governance of international environmental protection. The institutions of
international environmental law will have to be altered sooner or later, so the
discussion on the institutional changes is likely to remain on the agenda for
some time. Environmental protection is not the only objective of social
decision-making, and it has to be matched with the goals of sustainable devel-
opment. Various international treaty systems ought to recognize each other's
objectives and take them into account.
It is widely acknowledged that the measures required to conserve biological
diversity and to avert climate change would result in different policies. For the
aversion of climate change, it is important to produce effi cient carbon sinks by
planting trees that bind carbon effi ciently, or to maintain seagrass beds, man-
groves and salt marshes to bind blue carbon effi ciently, for example. From the
biodiversity perspective, this is problematic, as monoplantations (plantations of a
single species) are very poor in terms of genetic diversity.
So we see that cooperation between the treaty regimes is essential. Such
synergies are already being explored in the UNEP hazardous waste and chem-
icals cooperation between the Rotterdam, Basel and Stockholm Conventions
(see below, 'A model example: chemical regimes', p. 198), and between the
environmental regimes of the UN Economic Commission for Europe. We
must avoid replacing one environmental problem with another; this is formu-
lated in Article 195 of the UNCLOS: 'In taking measures to prevent, reduce
and control pollution of the marine environment, states shall act so as not to
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