The history of international environmental law - Introduction to International Environmental Law - page 33

Solving environmental problems internationally is no easy matter. It is not that
we lack the inventiveness to create environmentally sustainable development.
Our methods for environmental management are developing all the time as we
understand more and more about the ecosystems and their complex nature, in
particular. Environmental sciences have made extraordinary progress. We have
also become aware of how dependent humankind is on the ecosystem services
provided by our environment: in, for example, the regulation of the composi-
tion of our atmosphere and water systems. The natural environment performs
an incredible role in our survival, accomplishing natural miracles beyond the
feats of human engineering.
The major diffi culty we have in resolving environmental problems is due
primarily to our overriding focus on continuous economic growth. We have
become intensely aware of the change in the world's geopolitical balance.
China and India, among other countries, are seeking to emulate the levels of
development of the West, and their relative power in world politics will
continue to grow over the next decades.
Recent economic crises, both global and within the EU, have shown the
intense fear evoked by the threat of fi nancial meltdown as well as the consid-
erable resources that governments are still able to fi nd to invest in mitigating
the situation. Yet scientifi c assessments of the consequences of climate change
and the depletion of biodiversity border on the type of scenario encountered
in a sci-fi fi lm, but they do not seem to have anything like the same impact
on the way our governments function. Decision-makers still do not seem
to fully understand why environmental protection is so important. This is
one reason why environmental protection work has started to focus on
increasing our awareness of the immeasurable value of the services provided
by ecosystems.
The maturity of international environmental law
In the 1990s, a signifi cant number of environmental treaties on a great variety
of issues were adopted. Although it was becoming clear that the proportion of
environmental regulation does not necessarily correlate with an improvement
in the quality of the environment, there were still gaps to be fi lled. Many trea-
ties were complemented, amended and updated in the 1990s and the 2000s by
new protocols: for instance, the Framework Convention on Climate Change
was updated by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, and the Biodiversity Convention
by the 2000 Biosafety Protocol; 28 and many other amendments were incorpo-
rated through memorandums of understanding (MOU). Several agreements
were comprehensively renewed, such as the Baltic Sea Convention 29 in 1992,
for instance. The Oslo 1972 Convention on dumping and the Paris 1974
Convention on land-based sources of marine pollution were combined in
1992 into the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of
the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR). 30