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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 »
A brief follow-up on the ECJ’s Kadi decision and the Court of First Instance’s (CFI) – slightly less famous – PMOI decisions we reported earlier on (see here, here and here). The Kadi decision dealt with an EU regulation implementing a UN blacklist which provided for the freezing of financial means of suspected Al Quaida [...]
Filed under: EC-Law, ECJ, ECtHR, Environmental Law, EU-Law, EU/EC Law, Human Rights, Regional Human Rights, Regional Human Rights Protection | Leave a Comment »
On International Law Reporter, Prof. Cogan links to a short piece by Ingrid Wuerth describing the recent settlement reached in the lawsuit before a district court in New York filed under the Alien Tort Statute by the relatives of Ken Saro-Wiwa against Shell. We have previously blogged about the case here.
Filed under: Africa, Corporations in International Law, Environmental Law, human rights and business | Leave a Comment »
This is the controversial question asked by BBC Radio 4’s Richard Black in a programme broadcasted on Thursday evening. Links to radio programme available here and news feature here. In the programme, Black speaks to a number of different environmental campaigners who all describe how more traditional environmental issues like nature and species conservation have [...]
Filed under: Environmental Law, International Environmental Law | Leave a Comment »
While the build-up to this year’s important climate conference in Copenhagen (where the international community is to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol) has been going on for years, the diplomatic grandstanding is now starting to reach new peaks (or rather lows if the international community is to have any success in setting [...]
Filed under: Environmental Law, International Environmental Law | Leave a Comment »
To many human rights, environmental and corporate social responsibility scholars the name of Ken Saro-Wiwa is all too familiar. Saro-Wiwa was a Nigerian author and environmental campaigner fighting the exploitation of natural resources and alleged human rights violation in his native Ogoniland in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. In 1995, Saro-Wiwa was executed by the [...]
Filed under: Corporations in International Law, Environmental Law, human rights and business, Responsibility to protect | Leave a Comment »
For some time now, the argument that the pirates terrorising the waters off the coast of Somalia are a combination of environmentalists and Robin Hoods has been popping up (although it has not received the same amount of attention as the gripping stories of how the pirates held captain Richard Phillips of the Maersk Alabama [...]
Filed under: Environmental Law, International Criminal Law, Law of the sea, Public International Law | Leave a Comment »
The overarching consideration that the belligerent parties in armed conflicts should adhere to must be the need to avoid unnecessary civilian casualties. This, however, is not the sole concern. In addition to taking into consideration the plight of civilians, belligerent parties will also have to take into account the environment. Environmental issues are linked to [...]
Filed under: Environmental Law, International Environmental Law, International Humanitarian Law, Peacekeeping, Public International Law, Publications | 1 Comment »
As environmental law as a legal discipline comes of age, it becomes appropriate to subject it to critical appraisals of various shapes and forms. One such appraisal is undertaken in “Environmental Law and Justice in Context”, edited by Jonas Ebbesson and Phoebe Okowa of Stockholm University and Queen Mary University respectively, with special reference to [...]
Filed under: Book review, Environmental Law, International Environmental Law, international justice, literature, Relevant Literature | Leave a Comment »
If you hold an interest in international environmental law, you might find the special rapport in this week’s Economist on waste interesting. Although waste does not at first sight concern international law and related areas, the rapport fascinatingly describes many of the challenges and problems which waste gives rise to. Given that, on average, each [...]
Filed under: EC-Law, ECJ, Environmental Law, Human Rights, International Environmental Law, Law of the sea | Leave a Comment »
The EU Observer reports that the European Commission and the Swedish government (which takes over the rotating EU presidency in July), are contemplating plans for strengthening political cooperation in the Baltic Sea region in an attempt to address the problem of serious pollution in the area as well as the issue of energy supplies to [...]
Filed under: EC-Law, Environmental Law, EU/EC Law, International Environmental Law | Leave a Comment »
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has just launched a “most wanted” campaign for environmental outlaws at large. Usually lists of most wanted are kept for the purpose of criminal investigation of serious crimes like murder, child abduction or robbery, but the new EPA list is aimed at drawing the public’s attention to a group [...]
Filed under: Environmental Law, International Criminal Law | Leave a Comment »
The Times has an amusing piece on the weirdest legal cases decided across the world in 2008. You can read the list here. I read with particular interest the case from Austria regarding the question of whether a chimpanzee could be considered a person for the purposes of having a guardian appointed following the closure [...]
Filed under: Environmental Law, Human Rights | Leave a Comment »
More than 35 years after the publishing of Christopher Stone’s epic essay (at least for environmental lawyers) Should Trees Have Standing? Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects (45 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1972) it looks as if Stone’s pleadings have been heard. At least in Ecuador, which yesterday approved the country’s 20th constitution. The approved [...]
Filed under: Environmental Law, Human Rights, Public International Law | 2 Comments »
