Background of Environmental Laws: International Context

LAW AND
ENVIRONMENT
Preeti Kana Sikder
Assistant Professor,
Department of Law & Justice
Jahangirnagar University

NECESSITY OF
ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS
While scientists are already putting forward
chilling warnings before the world, it is the
leaders (aka Lawmakers) upon whom the
ultimate task of bringing change falls upon. Laws
play the final role in combating pollution,
recovering from climate change and protecting
mankind

BRIEF BACKGROUND OF
DEVELOPMENT OF
ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS

ERAS OF LEGAL
DEVELOPMENT IN
ENVIRONMENTAL ARENA
Use
Oriented
Resource
Oriented
System
Oriented

EARLY NINETEENTH
CENTURY TO 1945
Treil Smelter Arbitration,
1935 (Canada and United
States)

FROM THE ESTABLISHMENT
OF UN TO STOCKHOLM
DECLARATION

FROM STOCKHOLM TO
RIO (1972-1992)

WHAT IS STOCKHOLM
DECLARATION?
• The Declaration of the United Nations Conference on
the Human Environment, or Stockholm Declaration,
was adopted June 16, 1972 by the United Nations
Conference on the Human Environment at the 21st
plenary meeting.
• It was the first document in international environmental
law to recognize the right to a healthy environment.
• In the declaration, the nations agreed to accept
responsibility for any environmental effects caused by
their actions.

STOCKHOLM CONFERENCE: THE
STARTING POINT OF GLOBAL
DELIBERATIONS
• Until 1972, global diplomacy was revolving around war and
peace, around the decolonization of countries in Asia and
Africa, mainly, of trying to come to grips with economic
growth and with the battleground of the Cold War era.
• In 1972, the dimension of environmental crisis was added to
global diplomacy when this important conference took note
that the way the world economy was growing, the way we
were using our fossil fuel resources, our water supply, our
land and forest assets, our oceans was putting tremendous
stress at a global level on the earth's resources and
ecosystems.

BRUNDTLAND REPORT
• 15 years after Stockholm, Prime Minister of the
neighbouring Norway Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, was
called upon to convene for the world a commission to look
at this question, especially in what was anticipated to be a
20th anniversary of the Stockholm Conference.
• The Brundtland Commission, in 1987, brought the
concept of sustainable development to the world, by
introducing its most famous definition, that “Sustainable
development is development that meets the needs of the
present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs.”

RIO EARTH SUMMIT: 20TH
ANNIVERSARY OF THE
STOCKHOLM CONFERENCE
• This event became known as the ‘Earth Summit’ to come
to grips with the challenge of sustainable development by
facing up to three huge environmental challenges.
• The first treaty was about combating global warming, which
was becoming to be understood as a deep, dire threat to
humanity's future well-being, still looked at as a threat in
the future but a future that was fast being reached by the
human emission of greenhouse gases.

RIO EARTH SUMMIT
• The next treaty in Rio was to protect biodiversity as
ecologists were coming to understand that humanity
was causing the extinction of other species, not at a
one-by-one rate but potentially at a disastrous rate of
thousands, tens of thousands, even millions of species
being pushed towards extinction, by their land habitats
being destroyed, by overfishing, by chemical poisons,
by climate change itself.
• Thus came the Convention on Biological Diversity,
aiming to protect the world's biological diversity by
setting common standards in a common direction.

RIO EARTH SUMMIT
• The third multilateral environmental agreement
adopted in Rio was to fight the mass degradation of
lands.
• Lands that were once productive become unusable,
infertile, deeply degraded, especially in dryland areas
• The realisation that deserts encroaching on previous
fertile pasture lands and farmlands became
embodied in the UN Convention to combat
desertification.

“THE GIRL WHO SILENCED
THE WORLD FOR FIVE
MINUTES”
• In 1992, at age 12, Severn Cullis-
Suzuki raised money with
members of an organisation she
formed (ECO) to attend the Earth
Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
• Along with group members
Michelle Quigg, Vanessa Suttie,
and Morgan Geisler, Cullis-Suzuki
presented environmental issues
from a youth perspective at the
summit, where she gave her
speech.

“At school, even in kindergarten, you teach us how to
behave in the world. You teach us to not fight with others,
to work things out. To respect others. To clean up our
mess. To not hurt other creatures. To share, not be greedy.
Then why do you go out and do things you tell us not to do?
You grown-ups say you love us…but I challenge you, make
yours actions reflect your words.”
__ Severn-Cullis-Suzuki (1992)

A PRODUCT OF UN CONFERENCE
ON ENVIRONMENT AND
DEVELOPMENT
• A non-binding action plan of the United
Nations with regard to sustainable
development.
• Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of
action to be taken globally, nationally
and locally by organizations of the
United Nations System, Governments,
and Major Groups in every area in
which human impacts on the
environment.

MORE RESULTING
DOCUMENTS
• Agenda 21
• The Rio Declaration on Environment and
Development
• The Statement of Forest Principles
• The United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change
• The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity
• United Nations to Convention to Combat
Desertification (1994)

THERE WAS A GREAT DEAL OF
OPTIMISM LEAVING RIO THAT
THE ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS
HAD BEEN GRIPPED THAT
NOW THERE WOULD BE A
DIRECTION FORWARD.
IT PROVED TO BE VERY
FRUSTRATING EVEN EARLY
ON.

KYOTO PROTOCOL
• In 1997, governments met in Kyoto to adopt a protocol to
implement the UNFCCC.
• But the Kyoto Protocol met opposition in the most
powerful country and the one that at the time was the
main emitter of global warming greenhouse gases.

MDGS
• In 2000, with the new millennium arriving then
secretary-general Kofi Annan had the brilliant
idea to put a bold objective in front of the world to
cut extreme poverty, at least by half by the year
2015, compared to the rate of poverty identified
for the year 1990.

MDGS
• These were time-bound, quantified
objectives for cutting poverty, getting
children in school, cutting mortality of
women and young children, addressing
basic needs like water and sanitation,
fighting epidemic diseases like AIDS, TB,
and Malaria and, doing all of this by 2015.

MDGS
• This was a great mission and governments
at what became known as the Millennium
Summit, adopted Kofi Annan's proposal
and specifically adopted a set of objectives
in the Millennium Declaration that came to
be known as the Millennium Development
Goals.

PROF. JEFFERY SACHS,
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
“I was profoundly honored when Secretary
General Kofi Annan asked me to become
his special advisor on the MDGs, which I
did in 2001, after having advised Dr.
Brundtland on a Health Commission during
2000, 2001 which provided inputs to the
Millennium Development Goals. So, I
happily lived, and fought for, and watched
the progress and suffered the insufficient
progress of the Millennium Development
Goals for the period 2001 to 2015. I found
them very inspiring and I believe that they
helped to focus attention, mobilize efforts
for what are sometimes the most neglected
people and the most suffering people on
the planet, the very poorest people on the
planet.”

RIO+20 CONFERENCE
• During the period of the Millennium
Development Goals came another
anniversary: the 20th anniversary of the Rio
Earth Summit and what is, of course, the 40th
anniversary of the Stockholm Conference on
the Human Environment.
• The Rio +20 anniversary was held once again
in Rio de Janeiro in the summer of 2012.

ONTO THE RIO+20
CONFERENCE
• Climate change was pushing ahead dramatically,
especially with the rise of China on a coal-based
economy, massive increase of emissions--China
became the biggest emitter of CO2 and of greenhouse
gases in the world.
• And the rate of emissions rose dramatically rather than
coming down, the global warming was being
accelerated, in fact.

ONTO THE RIO+20
CONFERENCE
• The Convention on Biological Diversity in the end
was never ratified by the US Senate, never voted,
and so never adopted and the result is it was
always weak when the richest economy in the
world wasn't behind it and it was not discernibly
slowing the loss of biodiversity as it was aimed to
do.

ONTO THE RIO+20
CONFERENCE
• The Convention to Combat Desertification was
hardly seen again.
• Even though people were ardently fighting for the
principles to protect the drylands, the amount of
resources and attention that went into the dryland
regions was woefully insufficient, and yet these
were some of the violent, conflict-ridden hotspots
in the world-- Afghanistan, the Gulf region, the
Middle East, Syria, Iraq, the Sahel of Africa--
places of ecological crisis.

KEY POINTS FROM SUZUKI’S
SPEECH AT RIO+20
• Insufficient citizen engagement
• Success of current economy remains the
foremost priority for politicians
• Ample collusion between Governments
and Corporations is evident
• The current global meta-strategy is to turn
everything from nature into profit
• Massive paradigm shift still needed for
humanity to exist with dignity

KEY OUTPUT OF RIO+20
• The Government of Columbia came up with a very bright
idea; proposing Sustainable Development Goals in
conformity with the Millennium Development Goals, which
ultimately became the key outcome of Rio+20 Conference.
• The member states of the UN went to work they negotiated
for three years what would be the content of these new
Sustainable Development Goals, and they timed their
introduction to pass the baton from the Millennium
Development Goals to the Sustainable Development
Goals, from the MDGs to the SDG's.

ON SEPTEMBER 25TH, 2015
THE SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT GOALS
WERE ADOPTED BY
GOVERNMENTS IN THE
UNITED NATIONS GENERAL
ASSEMBLY

SDG AND AGENDA 2030
• Governments had worked for years to hone the
list of SDGs from an initial 300 proposed goals
down to the 17 which covered the three key
pillars sustainable development: prosperity,
social inclusion, and environmental
sustainability.
• Agenda 2030 is the text which includes the 17
Sustainable Development Goals and lays out
their rationale, their purposes, and in more detail

PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT
• After just a few weeks, the same governments
arrived in Paris to attempt finally to put some
operational meet on the UN Framework Convention
on Climate Change, which was not yet being
implemented.
• The Kyoto Protocol had failed in 1997--it was not
ratified by the US--and while other governments
adopted it without the US and then without China, it
wasn't making the difference.

PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT
• It took till 2015, in other words 23 years, from the adoption of the
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to come up with
the first operating framework and the Paris Climate Agreement
was successfully brought forward.
• This was a huge triumph--a hundred ninety three governments,
196 signatories (three other signatories--Niue, Cook Islands, and
the European Union also) signed on December 12th, 2015, to
adopt a meaningful framework.
• These two agreements, Agenda 2030 with the 17 Sustainable
Development Goals, and the Paris Climate Agreement, became
the hope of our generation.

PARTIES TO THE UNFCCC REACHED A
LANDMARK AGREEMENT TO COMBAT CLIMATE
CHANGE AND TO ACCELERATE AND INTENSIFY
THE ACTIONS AND INVESTMENTS NEEDED FOR
A SUSTAINABLE LOW CARBON FUTURE

THE UNITED STATES SIGNED
ON TO THE PARIS
AGREEMENT IN 2015 AND
LAID OUT AMBITIOUS PLANS
TO CUT EMISSIONS, BUT
LATER ANNOUNCED
ITS INTENT TO
WITHDRAW FROM THE
AGREEMENT IN 2017 AFTER
A NEW ADMINISTRATION
TOOK OFFICE.

PARIS AGREEMENT
• Bangladesh signed the
agreement on 22 April 2016
• Bangladesh ratified the
agreement on 21 September
2016.
• The agreement entered into
force on 4 November 2016.

GRETA THUNBERG AT COP24
UN PLENARY SESSION
“…we need to focus on equity. If solutionswithinthe system
are so impossible to find thenmay be we should changethe
system itself. You have run out of excuses and we are
runningout of time. We have come here to let you know that
change is coming, whetheryou like it or not…!”

INTERNATIONAL
SOURCES OF
ENVIRONMENTA
L LAWS IN BD

ARE THESE
TREATIES
DIRECTLY
APPLICABLE IN
BD?

SIGNATURE VS RATIFICATION
A means of
authentication
and expresses
the willingness
of the signatory
state to continue
the treaty-
making process.
The
international
act whereby a
state
indicates its
consent to be
bound to a
treaty

INTERNATIONAL
CONVENTIONS,
TREATIES AND
PROTOCOLS (ICTPS)
27
Signed
30
Ratified

SOURCES USED FOR THIS
LECTURE
• Age of Sustainable Development by Prof.
Jeffrey Sachs
• International Environmental Law:
Bangladesh Perspective, Abdullah al
Farooque
• Profile of Severn Cullis-Suzuki, Wikipedia

Background of Environmental Laws: International Context

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