Evolution and Implementation of International Environmental Law

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Evolution and Implementation of

International Environmental Law

The modern international environmental law exists due to the ability of the general international law and the states to identify previous and existing environmental challenges and to enter a process of learning from their mistakes by establishing the Aarhus Convention (Brownlie 1999; Stec 2010; Stec and Casey Lefkowitz 2000). The evolution of the Stockholm Principle I (1972) brought up the notion of the human right to the healthy environment. This was later strengthened by the Rio Principle 10 that declared the necessity to implement the Principle I by promoting public awareness and considering all levels of stakeholders in the decision-making process. Thus, the international law recognized the need to address the well-known Kuztets curve of the condition of the environment, where the modern state focus should be on enhancing the environmental conditions where humanity resides. Interestingly, this notion of healthy environment was very new to the existing generations of human rights (Brownlie 1999; Stec 2010; Stec and Casey Lefkowitz 2000; Szasz 1992).

The evolution of the human rights progressed rapidly through the 20th century, completely recognizing and establishing the first and second generations of human rights one by one. These rights include civil rights,  political rights, rights to freedom as well as the economic and social rights (Stec 2010; Stec and Casey Lefkowitz 2000; Turgut 2007). Third generation rights were first considered and discussed in the Stockholm Principles and include most importantly the right to the healthy environment and the right to the development (Turgut 2007). Another serious issue that is raised by the concepts of safe environment is the idea of sustainable development to be adopted by the states. Sustainable development is identified as the wise use of existing resources and progression of development without jeopardizing the future development of succeeding geenrations (Stec 2010; Stec and Casey Lefkowitz 2000; Turgut 2007). This concept spells out the principles of precautionary approach and addressing the pollution of the environment within the root of the problem (Brownlie 1999). Thus, the legislative framework of the international environmental law has to consider all possible ways to implement sustainable principles into both international and national framework. This is addressed in the Three Pillars of the Aarhus convention, where the states are responsible to promote sustainable development through accepting their duty to establish public participation within their decision-making process, informing their society about their legislations and providing public access to justice (Stec 2010; Stec and Casey Lefkowitz 2000). These Three Pillars were originally stated within the third generation of human rights to a healthy environment discussed within the Stockholm Principle I and also by the Rio Principle 10 which esttablished the grounds for public participation and promotion of information from the international level to the national level (Stec 2010; Stec and Casey Lefkowitz 2000).

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Today, the key duty of the states is to inform the public of their actions within the international environmental law (Brownlie 1999; Stec 2010; Stec and Casey Lefkowitz 2000). Thus, the state is obliged to inform the citizens of the progress and changes within the international environmental law. Also, the states have to provide a working scheme for the public participation in the decision-making process. This has to be achieved through the involvment of the non-state actors that will discuss the national framework concerns and raise challenging questions in order to speed the process of decision-making up and succeed in ...

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