The future of international environmental law - Introduction to International Environmental Law - page 190

while there is no such opportunity in international environmental law. Most
environmental treaties do not contain an automatic legal dispute settlement
procedure, so it is diffi cult to bring disputes into legal procedures. From the
free trade perspective, environmental protection is often seen as commercial
protectionism, against which the WTO rules are designed.
Although the Appellate Body in WTO dispute settlement has in some
decisions made it possible to consider environmental issues, the problem is
structural. The dispute settlement panels and Appellate Body of the WTO
generally interpret intergovernmental disputes primarily from the point of
view of promoting free trade. Environmental protection is permissible, but it
is an exception from the main rule and as such is interpreted narrowly. This
friction will likely increase the pressure to unify the fragmented fi eld of
international environmental law.
Searching for synergies between regimes
The benefi ts of synergy between different international environmental regimes
are already being explored. As the regime that comprehensively promotes the
conservation of species and habitats, the biodiversity convention has good
prospects of unifying the international regulation related to biological diver-
sity. Much has been done already. Cooperation grows closer between the
biodiversity regime and three kinds of treaty systems: the treaties relevant to
biological diversity, the Rio treaties, and other treaties.
The cooperation between the biodiversity regime and fi ve other diversity
treaties has advanced furthest: the Bonn Migratory Species Convention, the
CITES, the Ramsar Wetlands Convention, the Plant Genetic Resources
Convention, and the World Heritage Convention. These six treaty regimes
aim at coordinating their operations nationally, regionally and globally so that
the agreed objectives of protection and sustainable use can be achieved. They
have already developed many common approaches, such as the ecosystem-
based approach, and ways to implement their common objectives in practice
(such as work programmes, multilateral systems related to availability and
benefi t-sharing, and regional agreements).
To complement the conventions accepted in Rio in 1992, a Joint Liaison
Group was established in 2001 to increase synergies and to reduce overlapping
activities. This is a fl exible method of cooperation allowing the group to
exchange information, promote synergies, and enhance coordination between
the treaty regimes.
The biodiversity regime is also cooperating with many other treaty regimes:
for example, the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC), the Berne
Convention on the Conservation of Wildlife, and the Convention for
the Protection and Development of the Marine Environment of the
Wider Caribbean Region (Cartagena, 1983). The Biodiversity Convention is
gradually evolving into an umbrella convention, bringing together the fragmented
body of treaty systems protecting and regulating various species and ecosystems.