Our Earth Matters: Pathways to a Better Common Environmental Future

243 Pages·2021·2.937 MB·English

by  Bharat H. Desai (editor)

OUR EARTH MATTERS
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Our Earth Matters
Pathways to a Better Common Environmental Future
Edited by
Bharat H. Desai
Professor of International Law and Jawaharlal Nehru Chair in International Environmental Law,
Centre for International Legal Studies, School of International Studies,
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Amsterdam  Berlin  Washington, DC
© 2021 The authors and IOS Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by
any means, without prior written permission from the publisher.
ISBN 978-1-64368-178-8 (print)
ISBN 978-1-64368-179-5 (online)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021938855
doi: 10.3233/STAL9781643681795
This volume contains the articles previously published in the journal Environmental Policy and Law 50 (6) 2020 and 51
(1–2) 2021.
Publisher
IOS Press BV
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Preface

The 50th anniversary of the iconic journal Environmental Policy & Law (EPL) took shape in 2020 amid
the global disruption and trauma caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. After consultation, Marten Stavenga,
a colleague at IOS Press, accepted my idea for a Special Issue of EPL to mark this milestone, and invited
me to be the Guest Editor on 8 August 2020. Thus, I embarked on the task of an EPL Special Issue with
the theme: Our Earth Matters: Pathways to a Better Common Environmental Future. This was followed
first by IOS Press placing their trust in me as Managing Editor and then as Editor-in-Chief of EPL.
Editorship of a journal, like any scholarly work, builds on the shoulders of previous contributors, so it is
with due humility that I don this new mantle.
The quick follow up by IOS Press with this book as a sequel to the EPL appointments has proved to
be an unexpected boon. Hence, as a corollary to my two decades of scholarly works on global environmental
governance, the new role has set me on the wider path of finding scholarly and policy-relevant answers to
the global environmental crisis arising from the human developmental predicament that imperils our only
abode of planet earth.

Our Earth Matters

With regard to this offering of Our Earth Matters, it is pertinent to recall my early publication, as a doctoral
scholar, on “Destroying the Global Environment” (International Perspectives, Ottawa, Nov./Dec. 1986,
pp.27-29). This sought to underscore that the “human quest for development seriously threatens our fragile
ecosystem”. As a consequence, global environmental regulatory process has come a long way since the
warning bells rung by such works as Rachel Carson’s classic Silent Spring (1962), the Club of Rome’s
report on The Limits to Growth (1972), Richard Falk’s This Endangered Planet (1972) and Barbara Ward
& Rene Dubos’s Only One Earth (1972), which preceded the first UN Conference on the Human
Environment (Stockholm, 1972). In the same vein, Our Earth Matters, modestly seeks to present prognoses
and prospects prior to Stockholm+50 (2022).

Anthropocene Epoch

On 21 May 2019, it was officially recognized that we now live in the Anthropocene, our earth’s new
geological epoch, named for the 'unmistakable imprint of human activities'. That in turn calls for a new
human prism for the care, maintenance and trusteeship of the planet. It makes this an appropriate occasion
to reflect upon the course traversed in the past 50 years and to look ahead in an effort to seek answers for a
better, common environmental future. What lies in store for us in the rest of the 21st century and beyond?
How can we manage our profligate life styles, resource-heavy extraction-based production processes and
wasteful patterns of consumption in such a way as to not endanger the survival of life on planet earth in
general and the future of humankind in particular?
This calls for serious prognoses to make sense of the concerted, global environmental law-making and
institution-building processes, comprising normative approaches at work, the global conferencing
technique followed by the UN General Assembly (1972, 1992, 2002, 2012 and the forthcoming event in
2022), application and efficacy of the basic legal underpinnings of international law to environmental
challenges, actual working of the giant treaty-making enterprise, and the quest for a robust global
environmental-governance architecture.

Our Predicament

We are now close to the 50th anniversary of the 1972 Stockholm Conference in June 2022. This will be yet
another defining moment for a future vision to make sense of the perennial “predicament of mankind”, the
need to “devise effective responses” for the “world problematique” (The Limits to Growth, 1972). In turn,
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it calls for an honest assessment of what we have attained in the last 50 years of regulatory processes, use
of innovative tools and techniques, and the art and craft of lawmaking. Have these brought about a change
in human mindsets? How can we jettison human greed and define our needs? What might be the new ideas,
approaches, processes, regulatory tools and institutional structures that will address the global
environmental problematique which continues to haunt us?

Exploring Future Pathways

It is against this backdrop that this book comprises invited perspectives from outstanding scholars from the
five continents to probe the existing global approaches, regulatory processes, and instruments for the
protection of the global environment. It enjoins us to ponder our reckless destruction of wild spaces,
endangering of plant and animal species, poisoning of land, atmosphere, water resources and the oceans
(now predicted to contain more plastic than fish by 2050), melting of the polar ice caps and unsettling of
our essential ecological processes.
Our eminent contributors have sought to explore answers to the existential environmental crisis under
four headings: Prognoses; Processes; Problematique and Prospects. Notwithstanding our best efforts, it has
not been possible within the constraints of time and space to cover all major areas of global environmental
concern. Some colleagues were obliged to drop out for compelling personal reasons, but fortunately it has
been possible to fill these gaps at the last moment.
It is indeed heartening – nothing short of a miracle – to publish this audacious work amid the
unprecedented Covid-19 global disruption of 2020-2021. I am deeply grateful to all those contributing
scholars and practitioners who have made this possible; it shows that there may be ‘limits to growth’, but
there are no limits to the human zest and capacity to overcome the worst. It is this that provides us with a
beacon of hope for the future.
The primary objective of Our Earth Matters has been to sensitize the global audience, firing the
imagination of scholars and decision-makers to re-examine the current global approaches to these problems
and explore the future trajectory with new ideas, tools, techniques, processes, frameworks and international
environment governance architecture. This book is a modest effort to challenge those who formulate
international law and diplomacy to look ahead into the 21st century and beyond.
IOS Press colleagues deserve deep gratitude for making publication of this book possible.

I humbly dedicate this collective work to the quest for a better common environmental future.

Bharat H. Desai
Editor
Earth has enough for everyone's need, but not for anyone's greed

Mohandas K. Gandhi
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List of Contributors

Aguila, Yann – Partner at Bredin Prat, Director General of the Global Pact Coalition, Paris, France
Chami, Lionel – Special Advisor, Global Pact Coalition, Paris, France
Christiansen, Liv – Research Associate and Ph.D. candidate at the Walther Schucking Institute for
International Law at Kiel University, Kiel, Germany
Bosselmann, Klaus – Director, New Zealand Centre for Environmental Law, University of Auckland,
New Zealand
Brown Weiss, Edith – University Professor, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C
Desai, Bharat H. – Professor of International Law and Jawaharlal Nehru Chair in International
Environmental Law, Centre for International Legal Studies, School of International Studies,
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; Editor-in-Chief, Environmental Policy & Law.
Fauchald, Ole Kristian – Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Oslo, Norway
Freestone, David – Visiting Scholar, George Washington University Law School; Executive Secretary,
Sargasso Sea Commission, Washington, DC, USA
Kim, Rakhyun E. – Assistant Professor of Global Environmental Governance, Copernicus Institute of
Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Kotzé, Louis J. – Research Professor, North-West University, South Africa; Senior Professorial Fellow in
Earth System Law, University of Lincoln, United Kingdom
Mahmoudi, Said – Professor Emeritus of International Law, University of Stockholm, Sweden
Matz-Luck, Nele – Co-Director of the Walther Schucking Institute for International Law at Kiel
University and Professor of Public Law at Kiel University Law School, Kiel, Germany
Maurer, Peter – President, International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva, Switzerland
McIntyre, Owen – Professor and Co-Director for the Centre for Law & the Environment, School of Law
& Environmental Research Institute, University College Cork, National University of Ireland, Cork,
Ireland
Mercure, J.-F. – Senior Lecturer in Global Systems, Global Systems Institute, University of Exeter, UK;
Fellow, Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resources Governance (C-
EENRG).
Mrema, Elizabeth Maruma – Executive Secretary, Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity,
Montreal, Canada
Robinson, Nicholas A. – University Professor on the Environment and Gilbert and Sarah Kerlin
Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law Emeritus, Pace University School of Law, New York,
USA; Executive Governor, International Council of Environmental Law.
Rose, Gregory L.– Professor, School of Law, University of Wollongong, Australia
Ruppel, Oliver C. – Professor of Public and International Law and Director, Development and Rule of
Law Program (DROP), Stellenbosch University, South Africa.
Sand, Peter H. – Institute of International Law, University of Munich, Munich, Germany
Schrijver, Nico J. – Professor Emeritus of Public International Law, Grotius Centre for International
Legal Studies, Leiden University; State Councillor, Council of State, the Netherlands
Sundstrom, Anna – Secretary General, Olof Palme International Centre, Stockholm, Sweden
Viñuales, J.E. – Harold Samuel Professor of Law and Environmental Policy, University of Cambridge,
UK; Founder and former Director of the Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural
Resources Governance (C-EENRG).