Global green advocacy
N. R. KRISHNAN
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Articles on the evolution of international environmental law and policy
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THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT — Institutions, Law, and Policy: Norman J. Vig, Regina S. Axelrod — Editors; Viva Books Private Limited, 4737/23, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi-11002. Rs. 395.
A good book imposes on the reviewer the twin burdens of being brief as well as comprehensive. So it is with this collection of 15 excellent articles by the U.S. and European academics on the evolution of international environmental law, policy and institutions.
Marvin Soros rightly recognises global concern for the environment as essentially a development of the late 1960s provoked by oil spills on the high seas endangering marine life, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring that highlighted the perils of pesticide pollution in the U.S. and the Club of Rome's hugely influential study The Limits to Growth that painted an apocalyptic vision of the exhaustion of the Earth's non-renewable natural resources in less than a century. Local issues like acid rain over Scandinavia or the London Fog in 1972 helped buttress the call for both trans-boundary cooperation and national action to address the growing threat to the "global commons". An added factor, according to John McCormick, was the strident advocacy of green causes by non- governmental organisations.
Interdependence
Perhaps, the four best articles in the collection are those by Philip Sands, Edith Brown Weiss, Michael Faure and Jurgen Lefevre, and Gary Bryner. Sands traces the transition of the international society from a mere community of states to a larger canvas encompassing individuals, groups and corporates due mainly to humanity's realisation of growing ecological interdependence. Doubtless, the progress of science and technology leading to a better understanding of nature and her ways has been instrumental in spawning this realisation. With this, Planet Earth became, to borrow Kenneth Boulding's famous phrase "Spaceship Earth" with finite resources and equally finite capacity to absorb wastes.
Edith Weiss develops the interdependence line further. According to her, a consequence of ecological interdependence has been a steady erosion of the sovereignty of states, a concept and reality cherished ever since the Peace of Westphalia. State sovereignty over territorial jurisdictions is circumscribed increasingly by international "regimes" like say the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and its adjunct the Kyoto Protocol and the Convention on Biological Diversity. The international legal system is witnessing a blurring of public and private international law, emergence of non-binding legal instruments and the integration of international and domestic law. Weiss foresees a growing ascendancy of what she calls the "New Law merchant" that is transnational environmental law developed primarily by the private sector and by institutions such as the International Standards Organisation. Well, nation states may be sovereign dejure but transnational corporations will be sovereign de facto.
Trends in green law
Weiss's analysis of trends in global green law, though unwittingly, highlights the silence of the developing countries in international discourse. Due to their ignorance and indifference they fail to appreciate the nuances of international green diplomacy and their case often gets lost by default.
The mushrooming of green regimes and issues of compliance are examined by Michael Faure and Jurgen Lefevere. Currently, there are over a thousand international instruments having relevance to environmental issues. Compliance with them, according to the authors, is determined by what has come to be known as the "Primary Rule System" which essentially means the "duties imposed upon the participating states under the specific treaty." Experience has it that compliance is facilitated where the degree of behavioural changes as expected by the treaty from the parties and the costs of such changes are low. This would explain why compliance with an instrument like the Montreal Protocol on Phasing Out of Ozone Depleting Substances (ODS) had been remarkable but not so with the Kyoto Protocol on reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. The former called for behavioural changes on the part of producers of ODS who were a handful in number whereas the latter calls for large-scale changes by the governments, industry and individuals. This explains the opposition of the U.S. to the Kyoto Protocol and the equally strong disagreement of both India and China to have any quantitative curbs imposed on their greenhouse gas emissions.
Prospects
And what are the prospects of achieving an ecologically sustainable world as envisioned by Agenda 21 adopted at the Earth Summit in 1992? The answer is quite sobering. Gary Bryner is correct in noting that the Agenda spoke of too many things at one-go overlooking the failure of the developed countries to honour their commitments for aid assistance to the developing countries. In the meanwhile, third world debt has burgeoned, a condition hardly propitious for implementation of Agenda 21.
The book includes some informative articles on national and regional environmental experiences like the "Dutch National Plan for Sustainable Society", "Democracy and Nuclear Power in the Czech Republic" and an interesting piece on China's Three Gorges Dam.
This reviewer would commend the book to both the layman and the initiated. A galling feature, however, is the absence of even a single contribution from any third world academic. Something to ponder about.
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