Abstract
The international agreements and treaties in the field of environmental protection, concluded in the 19th — first half of the 20thcentury, resulted most commonly from the compromises ofnecessity; they merely intended to deal with urgent matters on a limited scale in the spheres where specific problems emerged or at least were a focus of attention (e.g. some species under the threat of extinction, pollution of a specific area of the marine environment). These cases were reasons for adoption of conventions, aimed at protecting endangered species or preventing marine pollution. Such a fragmented approach to the issues of environmental protection shaped a set of conventions, impressive by its amount, but extremely diverse in its content.The understanding of the ecosystems’ integrity resulted in the development of the principles, enshrined in the 1972 Stockholm Declaration and in the 1992 Rio Declaration, was to a significant degree driven by the spectacular advances in science and technology. As a result, the transition has been under way from the “spontaneous” formation of the international environmental standards to their consolidation around the special principles of international environmental law.Also a notable feature of many international environmental agreements — their “framework” character — is further analyzed. The adoption of the framework agreements gives rise to the complex sets of the convention documents, consisting of several different, but in a certain way interrelated agreements.Treating a question of the effectiveness of such a legal instrument as a framework agreement, the author concludes that the origins of the lack of effectiveness of the environmental agreements lie in the foundations of the existing economic system.
Highlights
The international agreements and treaties in the field of environmental protection, concluded in the 19th — first half of the 20th century, resulted most commonly from the compromises of necessity; they merely intended to deal with urgent matters on a limited scale in the spheres where specific problems emerged or at least were a focus of attention
The Framework Agreements in the Field of Environmental Protection. As for another peculiar feature of the agreements in the field of environmental protection — their contents — this feature consists, above all, in the existence of a large number of the so called “framework agreements,” representing the compacts, stating the principles, which should serve as a basis for the cooperation of the States parties in a particular sphere, and giving them an opportunity to specify in separate agreements the order and details of the cooperation with creation, if necessary, of one or several relevant agencies for this purpose
Danilov-Danilyan (1992, p. 69), interviewed by “The Moscow Journal of International Law,” proclaimed, “Everything what is intolerable in terms of ecology, is ineffective in terms of economics.”
Summary
It was not until the 19th century that the early international legal rules, aimed at sustainable use of the bioresources, first appeared. As a result of a forced compromise, rather than a yearned-for trade-off, these norms were intended to deal with the most urgent matters on a limited scale in the areas, where specific problems emerged or at least were a focus of attention (some species under the threat of extinction, unwarranted pollution of the specific marine environment) These cases were reasons for the adoption of conventions, aimed at protecting endangered species or preventing marine pollution. 12), “there are many agreements, dealing with the specific problems without regard to the rules and standards set by other agreements, resulting in the issues of their interaction and correlation in the way of the content and organization alike This situation is bound to loosen the global system of environmental protection.”. Kopylov pointed out correctly (2007, p. 240), that the history of international environmental law represented a series of less-than-prompt (at times ill-fated) responses to the sharply deteriorating situations of environmental crisis
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