In recognition of the need for new financial resources to be brought to bear to meet such global environmental threats as global warming, ozone depletion, loss of biodiversity, and pollution of international waters, the French government, with the support of Germany, proposed a Global Environmental Facility (GEF) in September 1989. In November 1990 the GEF … Read More.
Trade, investment, human rights, trade, investment & human rights, trade investment and human rights, sustainable development, unsustainable development, investment law, unsustainable investment, trade agreement, free trade agreement, free trade, bilateral trade agreements, BTA, MTA, FTA, multilateral trade agreements, host-government agreements
Enforcement of environmental laws is one of the key issues in the debate over the relationship between trade and environment in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Without uniformly strong enforcement in all three NAFTA nations, there is the potential for increased migration of “dirty” industries to nations with lax enforcement, and for increased … Read More.
The central obligation of international trade law is non-discrimination. For example, under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, commonly known as the GATT, nations are required to treat foreign products as favorably as they treat domestic products. Article 24 of the GATT, however, allows nations who have formed free trade areas to favor the … Read More.
As demand for fresh water escalates in the southwestern United States and Mexico, Canada’s water resources may be drained, if proponents of interbasin water transfers have their way. Continent-wide water transfer proposals, initiated by engineers in the 1960s, are being revisited as possible solutions to water scarcity in the desert southwest. Continuing development in the … Read More.
Former U.S. Ambassador to the General Agreement on Tariffs & Trade Michael Smith astutely noted that the environment is the trade issue of the 1990s, and that, unless a considered solution is developed to allow constructive interaction between trade and the environment, each of these vital policy spheres may find themselves compromised. Put in “Smithese,” … Read More.
Foreign investment is of enormous potential benefit toa counny Iike ·Poland, which has insufficient domestic capital to finance its needs. Foreign banks and corporations can provide capital for improving infrastructure (transport systems. communications. industrial plant. and so on), establishing clean production facilities. providing employment and protecting the environment. However, foreign investtnent also carries the risk … Read More.
This paper identifies and introduces the emerging principles, standards and other forms of soft law that form an increasingly comprehensive set of principles for guiding international society toward sustainable development. Although states may currently differ on the legal status of specific principles discussed in this paper (i.e., whether a principle is on the continuum of … Read More.
The problems facing the indigenous peoples of the world today are tied to domestic and international politics, as well as to the often conflicting hopes and desires of the indigenous peoples themselves. On the first day of the Global Forum, the unofficial summit of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) held parallel to the United Nations Conference on … Read More.
The Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer1 provides for the phase-out, by the year 2000, of CFCs and other chemicals damaging to the ozone layer.2 These chemicals are widely used in a number of industries–as refrigerants, solvents, foam blowing substances, aerosols, and fire extinguishers. The phaseout of these substances has serious trade … Read More.
A selected list of Human Rights-related publications.
To bankroll the rebirth of Central and Eastern Europe, forty countries and two European Community institutions joined together on May 29, 1990, to create the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the Bank or EBRD). The parties envisioned the Bank as playing a decisive role in solving three major problems that have relegated Central and … Read More.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (“EBRD”l was created in 1990 by multilateral agreement for the nations of Central and Eastern Europe, to ease the transition from centrally dominated economies to private market systems. As the newest multilateral development bank (“MOB”), the EBRD presents a great opportunity to challenge existing lending practices of MOBs … Read More.
Even with the most optimistic projections of technological advancement, current growth trends in population and the economy almost certainly cannot be sustained. Still more troubling is that the scale of today’s development already appears to be overextending the ecosystem that sustains us all. “Further growth beyond the present scale,” according to World Bank senior economist … Read More.
At the outset let me note that I am delighted to see someone of Professor Richard Stewart’s caliber taking aim at the trade and the environment debate. Professor Stewart’s article entitled International Trade and Environment: Lessons From the Federal Experience presents an interesting and informative discussion of how legal principles developed in the federal-type systems … Read More.
One of the most contentious issues at the UN Conference on Environment and Development was the Convention on the Protection of Biological Diversity. The goal of the Convention is to foster protection of biological resources, particularly· those found in tropical forests. Plants, animals, and derivatives of plants and animals are to be preserved, with particular … Read More.
This paper describes the United States legal and regulatory regimes for the export of various controlled and hazardous substances, including drugs, pesticides, chemicals, radioactive materials, and hazardous wastes. These substances are controlled by a variety of statutes: drugs by the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA), pesticides by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act … Read More.
The underlying goal of free trade policy is to allow markets to allocate resources to their most efficient uses, while the general goal of environmental policy is to manage efficiently and maintain the earth’s resources. Where the same resources are the subject of both trade efforts to allocate and environmental efforts to manage efficiently and … Read More.
As shrinking resource reserves require industrialization to push deeper into areas that have in the past been insulated from development, all around the world the last remaining indigenous societies are falling prey. Confronted with this human tragedy, environmentalists are finally taking action, joining the ranks of the human rights advocates who have been struggling to … Read More.
Women make up about half of the world’s population1 and contribute over two-thirds of all the labor hours worked by the human race. Throughout the world, women are the primary providers of child care, as well as suppliers for themselves and their families of many of the necessities for day to day life. Increasingly, women … Read More.
This essay briefly explores some of the current trends in international society with an eye towards developing a sense of global citizenship–of environmental rights and responsibilities. Part II of the essay discusses the apparent inability of the international legal system to respond adequately to global environmental challenges. Part III suggests that the failure of the … Read More.
The revolutions that swept through Central and Eastern Europe2 in 1989 and 1990 opened the Iron Curtain only to reveal a devastating environmental legacy — a legacy left from forty years of an authoritarian, centrally planned political and economic system. By now, the details of the environmental situation in Central and Eastern Europe have been … Read More.
The economic policies of the former Central and Eastern European countries serve as a stark reminder that environmental protection cannot be sacrificed (or severely degraded) for immediate economic goals. Unemployment in many regions is the direct result of factory closings initiated because they could not operate efficiently without massive government subsidies. Estimates of health care … Read More.
The Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer1 provides for the phase-out, by the year 2000, of CFCs and other chemicals damaging to the ozone layer.2 These chemicals are widely used in a number of industries–as refrigerants, solvents, foam blowing substances, aerosols, and fire extinguishers. The phaseout of these substances has serious trade … Read More.
Until recently few individuals realized that international environmental and trade law regimes, which had appeared to many to be on parallel tracks, were actually on a collision course. Then, on September 3, 1991, a three member dispute resolution panel (the Panel) formed by the nations who are signatories, or … contracting parties,” to the General … Read More.
Climate, climate change, two degrees, global warming, fossil fuel, emissions, mitigation, energy, energy efficiency, clean energy, dirty energy, climate change denialism, climate change liability, climate change responsibility, climate impacts, emissions, CO2 emissions, greenhouse gas, greenhouse gasses, GHG, industrial greenhouse gas emissions, pollution, anthropocene, renewable energy, displacement, deforestation, arctic, arctic peoples, sea-level rise, inundation, island, island … Read More.
In September 1987 the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer was signed. The Protocol provided for the partial phaseout of substances which deplete the ozone layer, the Earth’s essential ultraviolet radiation filter. In June 1990, prompted by a growing awareness that a partial phaseout would not be adequate, the parties agreed to … Read More.
protecting, rights-based approach, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, UNDRIP, Forest Defender, redress mechanism, safeguards, non-carbon benefits, resources rights, land rights, community rights, indigenous rights, forest dependent, forest, people, ecosystems, protecting forest people & ecosystems, protecting forest people and ecosystems, indigenous peoples, forest peoples, forest ecosystems, sustainable development, livelihoods, mitigation, forest conservation, … Read More.
Environmental democracy, access rights, Principle 10, Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, right to information, right to consultation, consultation, consent, decision-making, right to remedy, right to redress, Free Prior and Informed Consent FPIC, community rights, resilient, communities, resilient communities, adaptation, mitigation, relocation, rising sea levels, sea level rise, arctic, melting ice, melting permafrost, underwater, cultural … Read More.
biodiversity, ecosystems, habitats, living resources, wildlife, fish, fisheries, forests, conservation, species, endangered species, Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, CITES, mahogany, intellectual property, traditional knowledge, prior art, ayahuasca, patents