
Contents
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1 Some Distinctive Features of International Environmental Problems 1 Some Distinctive Features of International Environmental Problems
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2 Traditional State-Centric Approach 2 Traditional State-Centric Approach
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3 New Types of Environmental Concerns in International Law 3 New Types of Environmental Concerns in International Law
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3.1 Common Concerns 3.1 Common Concerns
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3.2 Future Generations 3.2 Future Generations
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3.3 From Anthropocentrism to Environmental Protection as an End in Itself? 3.3 From Anthropocentrism to Environmental Protection as an End in Itself?
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4 Actors and Institutions 4 Actors and Institutions
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4.1 States 4.1 States
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4.2 International Institutions 4.2 International Institutions
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4.3 Non-State Actors 4.3 Non-State Actors
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5 Normative Development 5 Normative Development
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6 Compliance 6 Compliance
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7 Conclusion: Is International Environmental Law a Distinct Field? 7 Conclusion: Is International Environmental Law a Distinct Field?
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Recommended Reading Recommended Reading
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1 International Environmental Law: Mapping the Field
Get accessDaniel Bodansky, Professor of Law and Emily and Ernest Woodruff Chair of International Law, University of Georgia School of Law, Athens, Georgia, USA. Professor Bodansky has written extensively on international environmental law generally, and climate change in particular. He served as the US Department of State's Climate Change Coordinator from 1999–2001, co-edited (with Jutta Brunnée and Ellen Hey) the Oxford Handbook of International Environmental Law, and is on the Editorial Board of the American Journal of International Law.
Jutta Brunnée Professor of Law and Metcalf Chair in Environmental Law at the University of Toronto, Canada.
Ellen Hey is Professor of Law and Deputy Director, GLODIS Institute, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
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Published:18 September 2012
Cite
Extract
International environmental law is still a relatively new field (see Chapter 2 ‘Evolution of International Environmental Law’). For example, the UN Charter of 1945 does not list environmental protection among the purposes and principles that it aims to promote, and it was only in the 1970s that a UN body specifically devoted to environmental matters, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), was established. Of course, legal issues that, today, we would describe as environmental issues are not entirely new,1 nor are legal arrangements that, today, we would describe as environmental agreements or institutions.2 However, the underlying issues were not usually conceived of as ‘environmental’. Instead, they were seen as resource issues, primarily relating to the conservation of wildlife for human uses.
This anthropocentric outlook not only has a long lineage,3 but also came to carry a historical burden that still encumbers contemporary efforts to address global environmental problems (see Chapter 12 ‘Critical Approaches’). International environmental law continues to struggle with the complaint that it reflects the concerns of developed countries more than those of developing countries and that it merely rearticulates some of the patterns of colonial exploitation in environmental terms. Just as colonial empires tended to treat their ‘outlying possessions’ as providers of resources—places where it was ‘convenient to carry on the production of sugar, coffee and a few other tropical commodities’4—some of the earliest conservation treaties, although concerned with the preservation of flora and fauna in Africa, excluded native populations from these reserves and glossed over the fact that threats to the protected areas and resources actually stemmed from white hunters and colonial exploitation rather than from indigenous uses.5 It is not difficult to see the debates over colonialism being replayed in the ongoing debates over whether developing countries, for example, should preserve biological resources of global concern or should reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and, if so, how much financial support developed countries should provide for such efforts (see Chapter 26 ‘Sustainable Development’, Chapter 27 ‘Equity’, and Chapter 41 ‘Technical and Financial Assistance’).
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