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With one dispute between Costa Rica and Nicaragua already pending before the International Court of Justice , Nicaragua has initiated a new claim at the Court alleging that Costa Rica has caused transboundary pollution through the construction of a road on the border of the two countries.
Filed under: Environmental Law, ICJ, International Court of Justice, International Environmental Law, Public International Law | Leave a Comment »
After running into overtime, the 17th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) finished Saturday. While press coverage of the event was somewhat muted compared to previous conferences (the aftermath of the EU Summit in Brussels on Friday night took most of the limelight), the reactions to the outcome [...]
Filed under: Environmental Law, EU-Law, International Environmental Law, Public International Law, United Nations | Leave a Comment »
In the build-up to the Rio+20 Summit next year, the UNEP has just published its ‘Keeping Track of our Changing Environment’ report. The report tracks global environmental trends and developments since the 1992 Rio Summit. The report highlights a number of disheartening (but hardly surprising) developments such as the increase in global CO2 emission from [...]
Filed under: Environmental Law, International Environmental Law, United Nations | Leave a Comment »
At the recent tenth Conference of the Parties to the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, the parties adopted the so-called ‘Basel Bal’ which will ban export of waste from Annex VII countries (OECD, EU and Liechtenstein) to developing countries. The ban was originally adopted in 1995 [...]
Filed under: Environmental Law, International Environmental Law | 1 Comment »
The UN News Centre reports that the small island state of Palau plans to seek an advisory opinion from the ICJ in relation to climate change. While the exact details of the plan is not yet clear, this is indeed a significant development. The ICJ has on previous occasions ruled that, while states have the [...]
Filed under: Environmental Law, ICJ, International Courts, International Environmental Law | 2 Comments »
Edward Elgar has just published Environmental Law and Sustainability after Rio (edited by Ben Boer, Jamie Benidickson, Herman Benjamin and Karen Morrow). In the build-up to the Rio+20 due to take place next year, the title seems very timely and it contains some exceedingly interesting chapters by leading contributors to environmental law debates from across [...]
Filed under: Environmental Law, International Environmental Law, Scholarship | Leave a Comment »
Increasingly we are witnessing a concerted effort in the attempt to utilise international law in the context of climate change beyond regulatory frameworks. This is perhaps particularly so when it comes to attempts to establish responsibility and liability for the harms and effects associated with climate change. Notwithstanding significant problems with this (most notably causation), [...]
Filed under: Environmental Law, International Environmental Law, Public International Law, Scholarship | Leave a Comment »
Cambridge University Press has announced the launch of a new academic journal titled ‘Transnational Environmental Law’. Submissions are sought for the first issue which is to be published in 2012. The blurb from CUP reads: Transnational Environmental Law (TEL) is a peer-reviewed journal for the study of environmental law and governance beyond the state. It [...]
Filed under: Environmental Law, International Environmental Law, literature, Publications, Scholarship | Leave a Comment »
The most recent issue of Stanford Journal of Law, Science and Policy is a special issue on the topic of geo-engineering. Readers interested in the challenges which climate change gives rise to may find the issue worth a look. In particular the short contribution by Robert Berg, who assesses whether the UN can be a [...]
Filed under: Environmental Law, International and national law, International Environmental Law | Leave a Comment »
The list of potential calamities that are like to become more frequent as a result of climate change seems to be growing by the day. Climate change has the potential to affect the enjoyment of human rights and is estimated to affect the most vulnerable populations the most. For some time now, discussions have taken [...]
Filed under: Africa, Environmental Law, International Environmental Law | 2 Comments »
A number of newspapers report this morning that a UNEP report examining oil spills in the Niger region of Nigeria is set to argue that the main proportion of spills causing widespread environmental damage and human suffering in the region is caused by criminal activity. The report (to be published later this year) points out [...]
Filed under: Africa, Environmental Law, International Environmental Law, United Nations | 1 Comment »
Yesterday’s NY Times reports that eight former executives of Union Carbide India Limited (a subsidiary of the American chemical company Union Carbide) were convicted of negligence as a result of their failure to stop the explosion at the Union Carbide India factory which killed more than 2500 people in 1984. The NY Times reports that [...]
Filed under: Corporations in International Law, Environmental Law, International Environmental Law | 1 Comment »
The Pulp Mills case arose from an allegation by Argentina that Uruguay had violated its obligations under the 1975 Statute of the River Uruguay and other rules of international law by the fact that Uruguay had unilaterally authorised the construction of two pulp mills on the River Uruguay, which forms the boundary between the two [...]
Filed under: Environmental Law, International Court of Justice, Public International Law | 3 Comments »
The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) is composed of a group of low-lying islands situated in middle of the Indian Ocean. The largest of the islands, Diego Garcia, is only 30 km2 in area. The islands are subject to British control, although sovereignty over the islands is also claimed by Mauritius. The British Government entered [...]
Filed under: Environmental Law, Human Rights, International Environmental Law, Law of the sea, Public International Law | 1 Comment »
The OECD Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises are non-binding principles concerning the conduct of multinational enterprises operating in or from the territories of adhering countries. The Guidelines were first adopted in 1976 as part of the Declaration on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises. Today, adhering countries include all 30 OECD Members as well as Argentina, Brazil, [...]
Filed under: Environmental Law, Human Rights, human rights and business, Public International Law | Leave a Comment »
So the long-anticipated Copenhagen Summit is over. The politicians and protesters have all gone home and there is a sense of anticlimax in the air. The result of the Summit is the so-called “Copenhagen Accord”, a non-binding commitments amongst countries to decrease their carbon emissions. Observers have now started asking what are the implications of [...]
Filed under: Environmental Law, Public International Law | Leave a Comment »
The following is a guest post by Jennifer Kelleher, LLB Law with European Studies (German and History), LLM in Comparative and European Laws. Jennifer previously interned at the Office of the Co-Investigating Judges in Cambodia and is currently working with the International Council of Environmental Law on Arctic Law and Policy. Next month, 191 countries [...]
Filed under: Conference, Environmental Law, Guest Blogging, International Environmental Law | Leave a Comment »
By Graciela Chichilnisky The global summit in Copenhagen in December will decide the fate of the Kyoto Protocol, the only international agreement we have ever had to combat the dangers of climate change. But the Protocol expires in 2012 and – like Cinderella – it will become a pumpkin as the clock strikes 12. The Danish [...]
Filed under: Environmental Law, Guest Blogging, International Environmental Law, Public International Law | 4 Comments »
An issue related to Innocent’s post on environmental rights and Michele’s on “climate refugees” is the question of to what extent does climate change affect human rights in general? This is a question which is undergoing a lot of scrutiny not least since the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights was, in 2008, charged with [...]
Filed under: Environmental Law, Europeam Court of Human Rights, Human Rights, International Environmental Law | 1 Comment »
Today is Blog Action Day, the annual event in which bloggers worldwide unite to draw attention to a particularly urgent topic. After last year’s topic of ‘poverty’, this year the organizers have chosen ‘climate change’ as the common subject. And what would be better suited for an international law blog to write about in support [...]
Filed under: Blogroll, Environmental Law | 1 Comment »
Professor Douglas Cassel’s commentary “Do we Have a Human Right to a Healthy Environment?” critique the existance of the right to a healthy environment in the international law discourse. The author argues that the matter has complex underlying legal challenges that have to be unmasked for it to be clearly comprehended. He brings an interesting dimension regarding the relationship [...]
Filed under: Environmental Law, Human Rights, International Environmental Law, Regional Human Rights | Leave a Comment »
No week passes without a newspaper article, television news or a documentary describing the plight of “climate refugees”. In this post, I would like to explain why, in my opinion, “survival migrants” is a more adequate term than “climate refugees” from a humanitarian and legal protection perspective. Secondly, I would like to examine to what [...]
Filed under: Environmental Law, Guest Blogging, Human Rights, International Environmental Law, International Humanitarian Law | 1 Comment »
International Law Observer is pleased to welcome Michèle Morel as guest contributor. Michèle is currently undertaking PhD studies at Ghent University, Belgium, Faculty of Law, Department of Public International Law, into the topic of “environmental migration” (more specifically the interplay between International Human Rights Law and Refugee Law). Prior to commencing her PhD work, Michèle [...]
Filed under: Environmental Law, Guest Blogging, Human Rights | Leave a Comment »
According to the Environment News Service (ENS), the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer, a protocol to the 1985 Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, achieved universal ratification this week when the prime minister of Timor-Leste ratified the Protocol. This is the first time ever that a multinational [...]
Filed under: Environmental Law, History of International Law, International Environmental Law | Leave a Comment »
