The global environment and the public interest

Abstract

Introduction: Few, if any, would argue against the proposition that it is in the interest of the international community to preserve and protect the environmental integrity of the planet on which all life, including human life, is dependent. Indeed, we are witnessing an inclination towards the wide acceptance of the notion that the care of the global environment “is a common concern of humanity”; a realisation that the interdependence of the world’s ecosystems calls for cooperative international solutions (both global and regional) to a large number of current environmental problems. We move quickly into disagreement, however, when the plethora of details asserted to be necessary or unnecessary to the goals of international environmental preservation and protection are addressed specifically in order to make policy decisions and preferences. At the international level, this disagreement has been most recently and noticeably manifested in the negotiations of the Preparatory Commission (PrepCom) leading up to the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). The point of all this, of course, is to highlight that while governments (and indeed individuals) overwhelmingly agree that it is in the interest of all to protect and preserve the environment of planet Earth, disagreement on the means to this end makes action difficult. How then are we to reconcile these contending and conflicting ideas about the proper course of action to protect the global environment? Does the idea of a “public interest” international environmental law suggested by this symposium offer assistance for dealing with environmental issues at the international level? The answer, in my view, unfortunately, is negative and this essay will attempt to illustrate how and why the idea of “public interest” is lacking in the current international system. With that said, one aim of this article remains to sketch in a short space how the concept may nevertheless be a helpful catagorical form that environmental lawyers collaborating around the world can use in promoting worldwide efforts to preserve and protect the global environment. Accordingly, I argue that the concept of “public interest” in the global context is not entirely vacuous, but instead can be given content -- even if for now that content remains abecedarian -- by international networks of environmental lawyers16 working to foster environmental awareness across borders. These networks are assisting local communities and activists to promote and act on international law touching the environment within their own municipal legal systems and to engage effectively with other activists worldwide. Through this dialogue and discourse, these networks may be able to build vigorous constituencies of environmental advocates with common and agreed purposes and agendas for action and a global culture based on environmental concern. A further aim of this essay is to set out the bearing that the collaborative efforts of environmental nongovernmental organisations (ENGOs) have had on the international system and the development and enforcement of international environmental law within municipal systems. While I fully endorse Philippe Sands’ argument that international law ought to grant ENGOs standing to enforce environmental rights in various international contexts and fora and believe that this is something to strive for, this essay is more limited in nature. It inclines instead to Martti Koskenniemi’s view19 that even as between states, very little has obtained in the world of diplomatic realities of state responsibility for environmental harm during the twenty-four year effort to give substance to Principle 21 of the Stockholm Declaration of the 1972 Conference on the Human Environment. Accordingly, the focus of this essay is upon municipal development and enforcement of both international environmental obligations and national laws protecting the global environment. In this regard, I canvass the activities of one environmental legal group working on such an agenda internationally, the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (E-LAW), and assess its impact. The essay concludes with a prescription for a greater globalisation of international environmental law by using the electronic “information revolution” to empower ENGOs and other non-state actors in the common cause of global environmental protection. Show more