Environmental Policy and Law

Environmental issue on to the global radar screen with the first UN Conference on Human Environment (UNCHE) hosted by the Swedish Government in Stockholm during 5–16 June 1972. The momentum generated by this historic meeting was attended by only two heads of Government of Sweden and India. It took place amid skepticism about the approach, the North-South divide and the idea that global problems need global solutions. It gave birth to a new UN environment entity – UNEP – that became the first major UN entity to be located in the African continent. The UN General Assembly driven global conferencing approach has stood the test of time as witnessed in subsequent summits at Rio de Janeiro (1992), Johannesburg (2002) and Rio+20 event (2012). Now the stage is set for the 50 years of the UNCHE. The first part took place in Nairobi during 3-4 March 2022. The second part will be held in Stockholm during 2-3 June 2022. The author has been privy as well as a participant in the making of UNEP from its inception and his life became intertwined with the life of UNEP. This article seeks to provide that firsthand account along with what went wrong and what lies ahead beyond Stockhom+50 event.

The 1972 UN Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) was ahead of its time in asserting that “Man has the fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being”. Fifty years later, at Stockholm+50, the human rights approach to environment protection has been significantly consolidated in international law and governance. The article describes and reflects on these developments from the 1972 Stockholm Conference to the 2022 Stockholm Meeting. The consolidation of the human rights approach to environment protection results from normative advances at regional and global scales, further world summits on environment and sustainable development, international treaty-making to protect the environment and human rights, international policy documents and declarations, and remarkable jurisprudential developments. In parallel, fundamental rights relating to the environment have also been recognised in numerous national constitutions and laws. While the human rights approach is not a panacea to resolve all environmental concerns, and to ascertain due concerns for non-human species and interests that are not directly linked to human well-being, it is a key to ensure that no one is left behind in the pursuit for sustainable development and prosperity.

It is growingly accepted that the Planet has entered into a new geological era, the Anthropocene. Even if it is controversial to assess the changes in the Earth System brought by this geological transformation, it seems clear that the increasing exchange between society and its biophysical support gives as a result a global ecosocial network of astonishing complexity. Consequently, it has been concluded that the Anthropocene would be a more unstable geological period compared with the Holocene, with escalating plausibility of nonlinear disruptive events. International institutions and governments of states continue to produce environmental regulations, inspired in a constitutional framing of the global environmental crisis. This approach is largely based in the concept of sustainable development, which implies a negation of planetary change and ignores the growing uncertainty of planetary processes, according to the complexity of interactions of human agency and planetary evolution in the Anthropocene. The occurrence of nonlinear events is at odds with a political and legal vision which is essentially static, because of the confidence in some kind of technological fix of global environmental crisis. This paper is focused on the inability of sustainability to capture the implications of the narrative of planetary transformation, and explores the concept of resilience as alternative.

This article envisions the future of the Third Pole Region (TPR) considering the principles and mechanisms for a regional alliance among the countries sharing the Third Pole environment. The TPR comprises the largest and the highest mountain ranges on earth connecting 12 countries. Often referred to as the “Water Tower of Asia” it is the headwater of 10 major Asian rivers that provides water to over 1.4 billion people downstream. The Third Pole environment is rapidly changing – changes driven by both climate and anthropogenic influence. Impact of the increased greenhouse gas emissions is considered to be more serious in the Third Pole than any other place in the world. The rapidly changing climate and its impacts on TPR environment means cascading changes in snow, water, air, land, biodiversity, and people not just in the TPR but also in the adjacent river basins and landscapes. Such transboundary implications demand attention going beyond country led climate action. It demands collaborative science interventions to develop a thorough understanding of climate trends and projections, drivers of changes, depth of consequences, but importantly harmonization of laws and policies to navigate the cost of impact and inactions for the entire region. The prospective “Third Pole Alliance” regional cooperation framework outlined here provides an institutional justification and governance set up to harmonize actions of 12 countries sharing the TPR. The alliance is going to be crucial if we are to regulate development oriented anthropogenic influences, streamline global, regional and local investments for collective climate action, and contribute to keeping the target of 1.5°C – the target which is already too high for the TPR.

This article is the revised text of the 2020 Stockholm Environmental Law lecture. Its two parts discuss, respectively, some of the issues surrounding access to justice by NGOs in order to protect the environment and whether the time has come to add a fifth crime of ‘ecocide’ to the crimes against humanity that are criminalised under the Rome Statute.

The menace caused by plastic waste is one of the biggest challenges the world is facing today. It is established that plastic pollution and its accumulation in the world ocean is one of the greatest threats exacerbating all three planetary existential threats identified by the UN. The presence of plastic pollutants in the marine environment is due to its transboundary and cross-continental movement. Therefore, after five decades of the Stockholm conference, it seems necessary to explore how far the principles and objectives of the Stockholm Declaration can be utilized to accommodate the rising concerns and to address the existing environmental crises, including the plastic pollution. There is a need to develop a cooperative scheme that enables the international community of States to come together and find a solution using the expertise of the Basel Convention. Such an initiative –a sort of alliance of states, both members and non-member States to the Convention - could also pave the way for similar collaboration among States to tackle the issues associated with plastic and other forms of pollution.

Where do we stand, 50 years past the Stockholm Conference and almost 80 years past Bretton Woods? What is the role of international trade in the contemporary systems design that has emerged from these two historic events in the turn of times? Climate change is a global human and environmental challenge that calls for more coherent action to achieve shared climate goals in times of climate emergency. It is thus argued, that international trade must become more systemically integrated, greener and more sustainable for that matter. The focus lies on the World Trade Organization and its potentially bridge-building function between distinct legal and political fields, which have long been perceived irreconcilable, but which are by their very nature inherently connected.

The ease with which severe harms can be deliberately inflicted upon the natural environment to coerce political behaviour pose real and current threats to both nature and to social stability. There is a serious lack of international law to criminalise environmental terrorism. This lacuna could be remedied in part by the formulation and adoption of a new treaty to define and criminalise acts of terror against the natural environment. The outline of such a treaty is described in this article.