Global Environmental Treaty Regimes as Balancer Between Environmental Conservation and Economic Growth: Facilitating Effective Implementations of Global Environmental Treaty Regimes

Abstract

International environmental law plays a political role to balance twin critical values of environmental conservation and economic growth by establishing new concepts, legal principles, administrative regulations, soft law, as well as governance strategies. By creating “gentle caps” on states to conserve the environment through wording while imposing as little harm to economic growth as possible, international environmental law is designed to mitigate the political tensions between economic development and environmental conservation. For example, many MEAs do not deny the utilization of natural resources while emphasizing “sustainability” in the situations where the issues arise. Some MEAs accept commercial uses of natural resources to conserve the environment. The compatibility between trade and the environment issues is also addressed by both WTO rules and MEAs for promoting mutual supportiveness rather than conflicts. Various Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) contain their own conceptual terms and legal principles developed in their own contexts. Recent new efforts for their implementations emphasize the necessity to make the most of MEAs by formulating governance strategies containing the elements of MEAs, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), rather than simply implementing them.