International Enviromantal Law

International environmental law (IEL) or international ecological law, is a branch of international law representing the aggregate of norms and principles of international law that regulate the activity of its subjects in the direction of preventing and removing damage to the environment from different sources and in the direction of the rational management of the environment for the sake of the present and future human generations.

The formation of the IEL branch has proceeded since the 19^th century and has passed through several stages in its development. There are three stages of IEL formation and development: 1839–1948; 1948–1972; 1972–the present. The first stage linked to the first attempts of “civilized” states to solve regional and local ecological problems; the second stage is connected with the start of the UN activity; the third stage marks the holding of global international conferences concerning these questions.

The sources of IEL branch are norms of the international environmental agreements, and international practice. The IEL branch has not been codified. In the source system, the norms of regional international agreements are the dominant ones. The most important sources are such agreements, as UN Framework Convention on Climate Change 1992, International Tropic Timber Agreements 1994, Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer 1985, Convention on Biodiversity 1992.

IEL development and functioning is built on specific fundamental regulations that are kind of juridical axioms in the relatively mobile substance of international law–principles.

IEL has two types of basic principles: 1) fundamental principles of international law; 2) specific IEL principles.

The fundamental principles of international law include the principles stated in the UN Charter, the UN Declaration of Principles 1970, the Helsinki Final Act 1975, and the principles worked out by international legal practice. These are basically the fundamental principles of international law: the sovereign equality, the fulfill in good faith the obligations, the non-usage of force and threats, settling international disputes by peaceful means and others.

Specific international environmental law principles are developing category. These principles have not been fixed in any codified form yet; they are scattered over a number of international legal documets having a mandatory (international agreements) as well as recomendatory (soft law) character. Such diversity causes some uncertainty in the positions of international lawyers concerning the questions about the number of international environmental law principles.

Usually the following international environmental law principles are emphasized: preventing environmental pollution, the rational management of natural resources, the precoutional approach, the freedom to research and to use the environment and its components, the polluter pays.

International legal regulation of invironmental conservation is different from component to component of the environment: conservation of waters, air, soils,forests, flora, fauna and etc. Consequently there are different international legal institutions within the international environmental law sphere: international legal air conservation, international legal animal conservation, and others.

P.A. Kalinichenko