Principles Of International Environmental Law Research Articles

Water Governance at the European Union

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & EducationVolume 135, Issue 1 p. 80-85 Free Access Water Governance at the European Union Ana Barreira, Ana Barreira Instituto Internacional de Derecho y Medio Ambiente, SpainSearch for more papers by this author Ana Barreira, Ana Barreira Instituto Internacional de Derecho y Medio Ambiente, SpainSearch for more papers by this author First published: 01 May 2009 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1936-704X.2006.mp135001010.xCitations: 7AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Endnotes Directive 2000/60EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2000 establishing a framework for Community action in the field of water policy (OJ L 327 of 22.12.2000). The member states of the European Union are: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, United Kingdom. The European Commission is a kind of executive power, the Council and the Parliament holding the legislative function and the European Court of Justice represents the judiciary. Costa v. Ente Nationale Per L'Energia Elettrica (ENEL) Case 6/64, [1964] ECR 585. As required by the principle of subsidiarity. Article 176 of the Treaty establishing the European Community (TEC 2004). A directive shall be binding, as to the result to be achieved, upon each Member State to which it is addressed, but shall leave to the national authorities the choice of form and methods (Article 249 of the TEC). COM (2001) 428 final of 25.7.2001. The following legislation will be in force until 22.12.2007: Directive 75/440/EEC concerning the quality required of surface water intended for the abstraction of drinking water; Council Decision 77/795/EEC establishing a common procedure for the exchange of information on the quality of surface freshwater in the Community; Council Directive 79/869/EEC concerning the methods of measurement and frequencies of sampling and analysis of surface water intended for the abstraction of drinking waters in the member states. On 22.12.2013 the following directives will be repealed: Council Directive 78/659/EEC on the quality of freshwaters needing protection or improvement in order to support fish life; Council Directive 79/923/EEC on the quality required of shellfish waters; Council Directive 80/68/EEC on the protection of ground water against pollution caused by certain dangerous substances; Directive 76/464/EEC, with the exception of Article 6, which was repealed when the WFD entered into force (22.12.2000). Article 9 WFD. See http://ec.europa.eu/environment/water/water-framework/scoreboard.html.This page provides an overview on the state-of-play of transposition and reporting by member states. The Draft Plan of Implementation, one of the outcomes of the World Summit for Sustainable Development, refers to the need to establish integrated water resources management (Chapter IV. Protecting and managing the natural resource base of economic and social development, Para 25). References Barreira, A. 2003. The participatory regime of water governance in the Iberian peninsula. Water International 28(3): 350– 350. Demmeke, C. and Unfried. 2001. European Environmental Policy: The administrative challenge for the Member State, European Institute of Public Administration, The Netherlands. European Environment Agency. 2003. EEA Briefing, Status of Europe's water, No. 1/2003. Online at http://reports.eea.europa.eu/briefing_2 003_1 /en/ EEA_Briefing_WIR_EN.pdf. Global Water Partnership. 2000. Towards water security: A framework for action. GWP, Stockholm. Global Water Partnership. 2002. Dialogue on Effective Water Governance. GWP, Stockholm. Lanz, K., and S. Scheuer. 2001. EEB Handbook on EU Water Policy under the Water Framework Directive. European Environment Bureau, Brussels. Olsen, A. 2001. The new water framework directive for the European Union and its possible effects on the Mediterranean insular context. Conference proceedings of the I Balearic Congress: Water, Future Perspectives. 1-2 February, 2001. Sands, P. 2004. Principles of International Environmental Law. Cambridge University Press, Second Edition. Citing Literature Volume135, Issue1December 2006Pages 80-85 ReferencesRelatedInformation

Adversaries or Partners? Science and the Precautionary Principle in International Wildlife Treaty Regimes

In 1992, the precautionary principle emerged from the sidelines to make a splash at Rio and make its debut on the international environmental law stage. Since then, the principle has been adopted in numerous international agreements and has become an important principle of international environmental law. It has also, however, experienced something of a backlash. Among other things, commentators have argued that it is incoherent and paralyzing or anti-scientific. This article identifies and analyzes four themes that emerge from the way in which the principle has been addressed by four major international conventions for the conservation of wildlife - the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). These themes shed light on how the parties to these conventions perceive the precautionary principle, its role in decision-making, and its relationship to science. The principle's use suggests that the principle is primarily perceived as a stop-gap measure to be applied at the operational level when information is clearly absent. Where, however, information is available, the principle is frequently treated as irrelevant. This in turn leads to arguments that those who see a role for the principle in these circumstances are acting contrary to the science. This article argues that this approach misconceives the nature and level of uncertainty in conservation. It proposes that decision-makers recognize the pervasiveness of uncertainty. As such, they should develop a distinct role for the precautionary principle that is complementary to science and that will allow the inevitable value judgments implicated in conservation activities to be made openly and with a background principle of ensuring conservation. To the extent this role takes the principle beyond its beginnings in Rio, this article argues that the role is necessary as part of the principle's maturing process.

Sumudu A. Atapattu, Emerging Principles of International Environmental Law

Sumudu A. Atapattu, Emerging Principles of International Environmental Law

The legal regime for application of the precautionary principle in India: future directions for the GM regulatory regime

The precautionary principle is one of the most contentious principles in contemporary international legal developments. The very fact that it is a principle of international environmental law has been questioned by many legal scholars. However, this does not take away the fact that the precautionary principle continues to be applied widely across sectors both internationally and nationally. The nature and scope of its application has varied widely according to the context and sector within which it has been applied. The central issue which this article seeks to address is the regulatory and the policy making space that is available to the Government of India in the context of the obligations as undertaken under the Cartagena Protocol and under various other international treaties. The regulatory space would also be affected by the domestic legal developments across sectors in which the principle has been applied. India’s recent decision on the large-scale commercialisation of Bt-Cotton has already created much debate regarding its appropriateness given the realities of Indian farm practices. More specifically, it has also led to a rethinking of the role and application of the precautionary principle in addressing these realities. Considering that the Indian policy on biotechnology is currently being drafted, it is important to look into the scope of applying the precautionary principle in taking any decision on genetically modified organisms (GMO) in terms of their distribution of risks, incorporating the social and equity impacts of such decisions.

Regulatory challenges to the implementation of carbon capture and geological storage within the European Union under EU and international law

Carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) is a relatively new technology in the context of climate change mitigation strategies, and its legal and regulatory implications are not yet broadly understood. This paper takes a brief look at international environmental law principles relevant to CCS, identifies key environmental and safety risks associated with the technology, and highlights significant legal frameworks that pose challenges to the implementation of CCS within the EU under EU and international law. It then notes continuing regulatory gaps that will need to be addressed for large-scale CCS to take place. The paper concludes that the clear inclusion or exclusion of CCS activities from the range of relevant legal frameworks will increase transparency, provide regulatory certainty and ultimately facilitate CCS in appropriate contexts.

Multiple International Courts and the ‘Fragmentation’ of International Environmental Law

A hallmark of contemporary international litigation is that it takes place in an array of adjudicative institutions including permanent courts, ad hoc arbitral tribunals, regional courts, and bodies with highly specialised subject-matter jurisdiction. The parallel operation of multiple judicial institutions poses a range of practical difficulties for international dispute settlement, and has introduced considerable unpredictability in some well-known environmental disputes. This article assesses a related but less examined question, namely whether in resolving disputes touching upon environmental issues some of these adjudicative bodies are destabilising key organising rules and principles of international environmental law by adopting parochial approaches that suit the narrow purposes of non-environmental issue-specific regimes. Such analysis is now clearly desirable having regard to the sizeable expansion in the body of international environmental case law.

Multiple International Courts and the ‘Fragmentation’ of International Environmental Law

A hallmark of contemporary international litigation is that it takes place in an array of adjudicative institutions including permanent courts, ad hoc arbitral tribunals, regional courts, and bodies with highly specialised subject-matter jurisdiction. The parallel operation of multiple judicial institutions poses a range of practical difficulties for international dispute settlement, and has introduced considerable unpredictability in some well-known environmental disputes. This article assesses a related but less examined question, namely whether in resolving disputes touching upon environmental issues some of these adjudicative bodies are destabilising key organising rules and principles of international environmental law by adopting parochial approaches that suit the narrow purposes of non-environmental issue-specific regimes. Such analysis is now clearly desirable having regard to the sizeable expansion in the body of international environmental case law.

Unravelling the Trade and Environment Debate through Sustainable Development Law Principles

The goal of this paper is to see whether, and how, Public International Law (PIL) principles and, in particular, International Environmental Law (IEL) principles can be used in order to find a balance between trade and environment in the study of the legal relationship between Trade Related Environmental Measures (TREMs) in Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) and World Trade Organization (WTO) rules. TREMs can ban, limit or affect in other ways international trade and this may lead to a conflict with WTO Agreements norms and rules. Three main approaches have been followed by States and scholars in this last decade to solve these conflicts: a 'WTO approach', an 'extra-WTO approach' and a 'cooperative approach'. Within these approaches several PIL aspects have been used including treaty law provisions and customary rules, such as the lex specialis rule. The non isolation of the WTO from PIL has been stressed by many important authors. IEL principles are becoming more important within the international community, and in particular the law of sustainable development. In fact, principles such as the precautionary principle and the common but differentiated responsibilities, among others, are being strengthened both by academics (the ILA principles of International law Relating to Sustainable Development) and by the entry into force of recent MEAs (Cartagena Biosafety Protocol, Rotterdam Convention, etc..), where these principles play a pivotal role. Currently, sustainable development is only mentioned in the preamble of the Agreement that establishes the WTO. Furthermore, WTO jurisprudence has not strongly recognised the legal nature of some of its principles. Notwithstanding these difficulties, we consider that the WTO could learn from other organisations which foster free trade such as the European Community. In fact, Art. 6 of the EC Treaty maintains clearly that all European policies must be undertaken accordingly to the overall sustainable development goal. If this were to be the case also in the WTO, then sustainable development should be included within the text of the different Agreements and mentioned as one of the organization's goals. Hence, panels and appellate bodies would use sustainable development law principles to interpret WTO norms and decide trade and environment disputes. In conclusion, we argue that PIL principles have already been used to deal with trade and environment disputes and that some IEL principles can currently be used within the WTO dispute settling system. Furthermore, we consider that, if sustainable development law progresses and its principles are strengthened by MEAs, the WTO Agreements should explicitly include sustainable development as one of its goals. This would allow WTO panels and appellate bodies to consider sustainable development as the framework under which to decide trade and environment disputes.

An Analytical Framework of "Principles of International Environmental Law"

An Analytical Framework of "Principles of International Environmental Law"

Book Reviews

Books reviewed: Tim O’Riordan and Susanne Stoll‐Kleemann (eds), Biodiversity, Sustainability and Human Communities – Protecting beyond the Protected. Dawn Chatty and Marcus Colchester (eds), Conservation and Mobile Indigenous Peoples: Displacement, Forced Settlement and Sustainable Development. Salman M.A. Salman and Kishor Uprety, Conflict and Cooperation on South Asia's International Rivers: A Legal Perspective. Carolyn L. Deere and Daniel C. Esty (eds), Greening the Americas: NAFTA's Lessons for Hemispheric Trade. Joseph Szarka, The Shaping of Environmental Policy in France. Philippe Sands, Principles of International Environmental Law. Richard O. Brooks, Ross Jones and Ross A. Virginia, Law and Ecology: The Rise of the Ecosystem Regime.

Book Review: Principles of International Environmental Law, Scientific Evidence in European Environmental Rule-Making: The Case of the Landfill and End-of-Life Vehicles Directives

Book Review: Principles of International Environmental Law, Scientific Evidence in European Environmental Rule-Making: The Case of the Landfill and End-of-Life Vehicles Directives

The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea: A Forum for the Development of Principles of International Environmental Law?

AbstractThis article examines the role of the ITLOS established by the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention. It considers the extent to which principles of international environmental law are reflected in the 1982 Convention. It then reviews the relevant jurisprudence of the tribunal including the Southern Blue-fin Tuna case between Japan and Australia and New Zealand, the MOX case between Ireland and the UK, and the Land Reclamation case between Malaysia and Singapore to determine the extent that the ITLOS case-law has indeed contributed to the development of certain key principles of international environmental law, including Stockholm Principle 21/Rio Principle 2, the principle of preventative action, cooperation and precaution.

The environmental legal and regulatory frameworks. Assessing fairness and efficiency

Since the 1970s, countries have protected the environment by means of various legal instruments, including environmental approvals and licensing. An environmental task force created under the Hydropower Agreement was appointed by the IEA to compare and determine the efficiency and effectiveness of such mechanisms, as they apply to each phase of hydropower development (policy level, project planning, project implementation, plant operation and plant upgrading, relicensing and decommissioning). It also examined whether legal mechanisms respected ethical principles as well as the protection of the environment, human rights and the right to economic development. This paper reports on the essential findings outlined by the task force. It discusses common deficiencies in national legal mechanisms relating to hydropower development and also proposes practical solutions and potential improvements. The main conclusion of this study is that environmental approval and licensing processes have become excessively rigid and cumbersome in many countries and that governments need to rethink the approval process and reform the legal and regulatory frameworks. Governments should consider a mechanism such as a strategic environmental assessment implemented at the policy level and processes that systematically integrate information gathered by previous monitoring studies. And since hydropower development raises ethical dilemmas that are difficult to reconcile, some decisions should be made by the legislative branch and not by the executive branch or other decision-making body. Moreover, proponents should adopt a code of conduct based on ethics and principles of international environmental law.

Poverty, Wealth, and Obligation in International Environmental Law

Developing nations are demonstrating some success in basing their participation in international environmental governance upon commitments by developed nations to provide financial resources and technology transfer. In recent years, these commitments have achieved textual status within a number of multilateral agreements. Part I of this Article identifies and documents treaty-based examples of this swap of resources in exchange for participation - in particular, in the areas of climate change, biodiversity use/conservation, and ozone protection. This Article suggests that this swap represents a dynamic and emerging relationship between the North and the South that can best be described as a Part II explores the juristic basis of the shared compact. Although treaty-based, the shared compact derives from several important and interdisciplinary principles of international environmental and economic law, moral philosophy, and international relations theory. In Part III this Article argues that, among these diverse sources, the shared compact largely is the result of justice, namely the developed world seeking to avoid the environmental externalities of the developing nations' future industrialization and the developing world seeking to minimize the costs of environmental protection, although both groups elected to proceed through broad multilateral negotiations, thereby ensuring that smaller developing nations not be left behind or excluded through what would likely have been more cost-effective bilateral bargaining among the major players. The primus inter pares nature of the selfish justice motivation explains why the environmental issue-areas in which the shared compact has arisen (and would arise in the future) tend to be ones in which common concerns of humanity are threatened or in which externalities are imposed on the developed world, and not issue-areas with local impact upon developing nations alone, regardless of the severity of that impact. Part IV raises important questions triggered by the emergence of the shared compact. These include: (a) juridical questions related to the legal status of the transfer commitments; (b) practical questions related to their ability to enhance compliance with and implementation of the international environmental agreements in which they are found; and (c) political questions related to the plausibility of maintaining the political will in the North, particularly in the United States, to remain within a shared compact given increased awareness of the costs thereof. In the end, the shared compact may extract international environmental governance from certain impasses. But it may replace these with new, and potentially insurmountable, ones.

Applying the “Polluters Pays Principle” to Fund Oil Spill Preparedness in the North East Atlantic1

ABSTRACT Under Article 6 of the International Convention on Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Co-Operation (OPRC 1990), states individually or in cooperation with industry or others states shall maintain prepositioned oil spill combating equipment. Furthermore, the preamble of the OPRC 1990 and the HNS-OPRC Protocol 2000 reinforce that the Polluter Pays Principle (PPP) should be taken into account as a general principle of international environmental law. With a few exceptions, most of the countries have transferred the costs of preparedness measures to the general taxpayer and have made no attempts to allocate this cost directly to the shipping industry in accordance with PPP. In the North East Atlantic (N??) countries (France, Spain, Portugal, and Morocco), as well as in the majority of countries, the financial costs for maintaining a minimum state of preparedness represent a considerable burden to these governments. Despite this fact, no attempts have been made to transfer this burden to the potential polluter. Based on the inquiries made into the extent to which the PPP presently is being applied to oil spill preparedness, this paper examines the aspects related to the general application of the PPP in the N?? countries.

Principles of International Environmental Law: an Overview

A general overview of the principles of international environmental law is best approached with a certain degree of caution. First, international environmental law principles can hardly be dissociated from the politically sensitive and complex issues surrounding the notion of sustainable development. Second, a general approach is at odds with the sheer heterogeneity of the phenomenon of principles.

Principles of International Environmental Law. Volume I: Frameworks, Standards and Implementation. By Philippe Sands. Manchester University Press, 1995. 773 pp. 90 (hardback); 29.99 (paper)

Principles of International Environmental Law. Volume I: Frameworks, Standards and Implementation. By Philippe Sands. Manchester University Press, 1995. 773 pp. 90 (hardback); 29.99 (paper)

Risk Characterization and the Weight of Evidence: Adapting Gatekeeping Concepts from the Courts

Risk characterization objectives include evaluating the weight of evidence underlying risk determinations, communicating that evaluation to nonexperts, guiding risk assessors to achieve consistency, and preserving deference for those reasonable expert judgments inherent in any risk determination. Similar objectives are shared by American courts that face the gatekeeping task of screening scientific evidence before it is presented to nonexpert factfinders, such as juries. This article surveys the judicial gatekeeping concepts of relevance, evidentiary reliability, legal sufficiency, presumptions, and standards of proof (particularly, preponderance of the evidence). It examines recent court decisions that have applied these concepts to the kinds of scientific information common in risk assessments, and suggests how to adapt these gatekeeping concepts for use in weight‐of‐evidence characterization. If we can develop and adopt a neutral framework for characterizing the weight of evidence underlying risk assessments, it might help clarify not only the current debate over risk characterization and risk management, but also the drafting of treaty provisions, such as those invoking the Precautionary Principle of international environmental law.