Core Issues in International Sustainable Development: Analysis of Shifting Priorities at U.N. Environmental Conferences
| Date | 01 July 2014 |
| Author |
44 ELR 10574 ENVIRONMENTAL LAW REPORTER 7-2014
Core Issues in
International
Sustainable
Development:
Analysis of
Shifting Priorities
at U.N.
Environmental
Conferences
by Woong Kyu Sung
Woong Kyu Sung is an attorney at the Permanent Mission of
the Republic of Korea to the United Nations, and an S.J.D.
candidate at the George Washington University Law School.
Summary
ere is now a 40-year history of declaratory out-
comes from international environmental conferences
that oers insight into the progression of sustainable
development. is Article uses those outcomes to
track the relative roles of the environmental, social,
and economic pillars of sustainable development. As
these roles have changed, the theory of sustainability
and the impetus to realize it in practice have changed
as well. e Article questions the meaning of these
changes and asks whether the end result is what was
intended at the beginning.
The United Nations Conference on Sustainable
Development, known as Rio+20, came to an end
two yea rs ago. For more than 40 years, ever since
the United Nations (U.N.) convened the rst environmen-
tal conference in Stockholm in 1972, the international
community has raised its collective voice for conserva-
tion, protection, and promotion of t he environment. is
Article examines the text of the declaratory outcomes
produced by the three leading international environmen-
tal conferences, and identies the progression and regres-
sion of the environmental, social, and economic pillars of
sustainable development. e transition in focus in these
conferences—from environmental protection to sustain-
able development to a green economy—accompanied sub-
stantive and quantitative changes in the balance among the
three pillars, which have transformed the theory of sustain-
ability and the impetus to realize it in practice. e Article
presents several questions on the meaning of this transfor-
mation, and analyzes whether the current balance satises
the international community’s original consensus on the
concept of sustainable development.
I. Introduction: Analyzing the U.N.
Environmental Conferences
e roots of U.N. ac tion on the environ ment were
planted in a 1968 let ter submitte d by the Swedi sh gov-
ernment to the U.N. Economic and Social Council, pro-
posing “a framework for a comprehensive consideration
... of the problem of human environment.”1 rough
subsequent discus sions and negotiations, the U.N. Gen-
eral Assembly adopted a resolution to c onvene the Con-
ference on the Huma n Environment, 2 which took place
in Stockholm in 1972. On June 22, 2012, the Confer-
ence on Susta inable Development, another impor tant
1. Letter dated May 20, 1968, from the Permanent Rep. of Sweden to the
Secretary-General, U.N. ESCOR, 44th Sess., Agenda Item 23, addendum
pt. 1, at 2, U.N. Doc. E/4466/Add.1 (1968).
2. G.A. Res. 2398, U.N. GAOR, 23rd Sess., Supp. No. 18, at 2-3, U.N. Doc.
A/7218 (1968).
Korea. e author would like to convey sincere appreciation to Dinah
Copyright © 2014 Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, DC. Reprinted with permission from ELR®, http://www.eli.org, 1-800-433-5120.
7-2014 NEWS & ANALYSIS 44 ELR 10575
conferenc e, announced its ocial close in Rio. For more
than 40 years, starting i n Stoc kholm, the intern ational
communit y tried various env ironmental protection mea-
sures th at yielded many fruits, about which scholars’ and
practit ioners’ opinion s vary.
To analyze changes in the international perspective, this
Article examines the three monumental environmental
conferences held at 20-year intervals. Although there have
been other important environmental conferences (notably
the 1982 Nairobi Summit and the 2002 Johannesburg
Summit), the U.N. Conference on the Human Environ-
ment (Stockholm Conference), the U.N. Conference on
Environment and Development (Rio Conference), and the
U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20
Conference) have seminal importance in setting interna-
tional norms. ree themes consistently appeared in these
conferences. Global political leaders assembled at the 2005
World Summit formalized the themes, which have since
been called “the three pillars of sustainable development,”
representing t he environmental, economic, and social
dimensions of sustainability.3
e Article traces the substantive progression of the
three pillars, as well as changes in their balance throughout
the history of the major environmental conferences. Part II
introduces the conferences. Part III compares the outcome
texts thematically for a qualitative ana lysis of the confer-
ences, pinpointing 10 particularly important categories in
the evolution of both sustainable development and an inter-
national environmental legal regime. Each categor y exam-
ines provisions t hat appear in all the conference outcome
texts; provisions that appear only in later ones; and provi-
sions that move or disappear in the later texts, in order to
identify any progression or regression from one conference
to another. Part IV compares the outcome texts chrono-
logically for a quantitative analysis of the conferences. at
part explores the uctuation of bala nce in the numerical
proportion of the presence of environmental, social, and
economic pillars through the three conferences, in order
to present an objective view of the role and signicance of
each pillar, despite the appea rance of integration among
those pillars and the impression of their equal gravity.
e texts a nalyzed in this Article a re the declarations
from each conference. A n international declaration is
essentially a political document. Although it has no bind-
ing legal eect, it represents both a high degree of consensus
in the international community and the existence of moral
force behind such consensus—a force that may aect the
3. G.A. Res. 60/1, U.N. GAOR, 60th Sess., Supp. No. 49, Vol. I, ¶48, U.N.
Doc. A/60/49 (2005). Dinah Shelton and Alexandre Kiss point out that “[i]
nternational environmental law does not and cannot develop in isolation,
because all human activities have an impact on the environment.” See D-
S A K, I E L
761 (3d ed. 2004).
behaviors of declarant states and lead to appropriate policy-
making and legislation.4 us, an international conference
declaration may be considered “soft law” in international
law.5 In the development of an international legal regime,
the normativity of a declaration takes a central role.6 e
normative power of a decla ration derives from its princi-
ples. Principles, located at a point on the spectrum between
society’s values and its rules, facilitate the transformation of
abstract values into concrete legal rules. Hence, a substan-
tial part of the outcome of the Stockholm and Rio Confer-
ences was in the form of declarations with principles.
Global environmental conferences of ten produce t wo
types of outcome documents: one for political declaration
and the other for a plan of action or implementation. It
is noteworthy that the R io+20 Conference did not follow
this line of reasoning: R io+20 neither produced a decla-
ration nor explicitly provided principles. Hoping that a n
ideal that had been on the international stage since the
early 1970s could end up with implementable legal rules,
participants may have intended to produce more opera-
tive outcome documents. e real reason, however, for
having one outcome document in Rio+20 seems to have
been avoiding voluminous documents for an action plan or
implementation that was unlikely to be carefully reviewed
and operative in practice.7 Instead, Rio+20 attempted to
integrate the two components into a relatively concise out-
come document.
Of the six chapters in that outcome document, the rst
four comprise a political declaration, and the remaining two
4. Dinah L. Shelton, 1-2 (George Washington Univ. Law School,
Public Law & Legal eory Working Paper No. 322, 2008).
5. Shelton describes recent state practice in the development of international
law, noting that normative statements have increasingly been placed in
nonbinding political instruments such as declarations. She observes that
although they are not law per se, the norms that their texts contain expect
compliance, sometimes as eectively as the compliance required by law. See
id. It is noteworthy that the U.N. Environment Program formerly classied
declarations under the category of law. See Paolo Galizzi, From Stockholm to
, 29 F I’ L.J. 952, 968 n.75 (2005).
6. For example, the Historic Archives of the U.N. Audiovisual Library of In-
ternational Law states in an introductory note for the Environmental Law
Section that the Stockholm and Rio Declarations represent “major mile-
stones in the evolution of international environmental law” and “major
environmental legal landmark[s].” See Günther Handl,
-
, 1992
1 (U.N. Audiovisual Library of Int’l Law 2012), at http://untreaty.un.org/
cod/avl/pdf/ha/dunche/dunche_e.pdf (last visited July 18, 2013).
7. In its Resolution 64/236, the General Assembly decided that the Rio+20
Conference shall result in “a focused political document.” See G.A. Res.
64/236, U.N. GAOR, 64th Sess., Supp. No. 49, ¶ 20(b) U.N. Doc.
A/64/49 (2009). Underlying the decision was the desire to increase the
conference outcome’s eectiveness and eciency, not only by avoiding a
lengthy and costly negotiation process prior to and during the conference,
but also by having a realistic basis for action or implementation. ese con-
cerns were expressed repeatedly in preparatory meetings for the zero-draft
outcome document of the conference, particularly during bureau meetings
in which the author participated during the winter of 2011-2012.
Copyright © 2014 Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, DC. Reprinted with permission from ELR®, http://www.eli.org, 1-800-433-5120.
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