"in Countless Ways and on an Unprecedented Scale": Reflections on the Stockholm Declaration at 50

• Citation: Vol. 50 No. 3
• Publication year: 2022
• topic: Environmental Law

"In Countless Ways and On an Unprecedented Scale": Reflections on the Stockholm Declaration at 50

Rebecca Bratspies^*

[Page 754]

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. BACKGROUND.......................................................................................756

II. THE DECLARATION AND A CRITIQUE...................................................758

III. COMMODIFICATION AND OVERCONSUMPTION.....................................759

IV. TRANSNATIONAL ENTERPRISES: THE MISSING ACTORS......................764

V. CONCLUSION.......................................................................................767

[Page 755]

In 2022, the Stockholm Declaration will be 50 years old.¹ Mid-life is a good time for stocktaking; for reflection and analysis. This article will begin with an overview of the many well-known successes that followed from the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment.² But like any other reflection, the article elucidates two major omissions in the Stockholm proceedings and its progeny.³ The first such omission grows from lack of focus on reducing overconsumption in the very anthropocentric Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, and the ensuing Stockholm Declaration. The second omission emerged from the unrelenting focus on states, rather than all "organs of society"⁴ as the actors of concern for international environmental law. The article then shows how these two major omissions at Stockholm produced an international environmental framework unable to "see" environmental integrity as an independent imperative for international law, and in the process limited international law's ability to

[Page 756]

respond to systemic environmental problems like climate change, species extinction, and/or the rights of environmental defenders.

I. BACKGROUND

The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm, Sweden in June 1972 was in many ways a transformative moment for international law. It launched the first salvo in what has become a multi-decade struggle to facilitate the international cooperation necessary to keep the Earth as a livable planet.⁵

When 113 nations gathered in Stockholm in 1972, the world was a very different place. The human population was half its current level,⁶ the atmospheric carbon concentration was roughly 326 ppm,⁷ and animal populations were nearly 70% less vulnerable.⁸ The Vietnam war was raging as a proxy war between the United States and the USSR,⁹ East and West Germany were on the cusp of being admitted simultaneously in to the UN,¹⁰ Bangladesh was a newly sovereign state,¹¹ Rhodesia and South Africa were ruled by minority white governments,¹² and the People's Republic of China just reclaimed China's UN seat, ousting the Republic of China (Taiwan).¹³

Despite many political hurdles,¹⁴ the delegates gathered at Stockholm managed to create a consensus around an "inspirational, informative, and

[Page 757]

educational" declaration about environmental problems.¹⁵ It began the process of building an international infrastructure for states to respond collectively to the problems of environmental degradation. As such, the Stockholm Conference was a formative moment of environmental governance. It put environmental protection on the United Nations' agenda for the first time.¹⁶ It resulted in the creation of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP),¹⁷ and contributed to the negotiation and adoption of many of the multilateral environmental treaties adopted in its wake.¹⁸ Many state environmental ministries trace their existence back to Stockholm,¹⁹ and both the United Nations and Conference Secretary General, Maurice Strong, made concerted efforts to facilitate participation by developing countries (which made up a majority of the attendees). ²⁰ And, of course, it produced the Stockholm Declaration, which established once and for all that environmental concerns transcended national borders and were an appropriate issue of concern for international law.²¹ Indeed, as this 50^th anniversary conference convened in virtual space, the United Nations Human Rights Council voted 43-0-4 to recognize the right to a safe, clean, and healthy environment.²² That

[Page 758]

long-overdue recognition is a huge victory and has its roots in the Stockholm Declaration.²³

In order to move ahead in our quest to protect our "only one earth,"²⁴ it makes sense to begin by looking back at Stockholm in order to appreciate what did and did not happen there. As indicated above, there were many important and laudable outcomes from the Stockholm Conference. However, this article focuses on what did not happen at Stockholm, specifically on two elements missing from the Stockholm Declaration: reducing overconsumption and reigning in transnational corporations. These omissions hampered the effectiveness of the international environmental law regime that emerged at Stockholm and continue to be stumbling blocks to concerted action to this day.

II. THE DECLARATION AND A CRITIQUE

Most readers of the Stockholm Declaration skip straight to the Declaration's principles—the seemingly important, albeit non-binding, parts of the conference outcome document. However, to really understand this document in its context, it is necessary to "begin at the beginning,"²⁵ with the preamble.

Paragraph 1 of the Stockholm Declaration Preamble begins "Man is both a creature and moulder of his environment,"²⁶ and then acknowledges that "man has acquired the power to transform his environment in countless ways and on an unprecedented scale."²⁷ These words frame the rest of the Declaration. As such, it is highly instructive in terms of understanding what was at the center of the conversation fifty years ago concerning "man and his

[Page 759]

environment."²⁸ It helps us understand what questions the world were and were not asking itself at the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. The organizers of this conference in 2021 adjusted the language of the Declaration, replacing "man" with "humankind" in order to be more inclusive.²⁹ While I appreciate the instinct toward inclusion, I think this rewriting does a disservice. Use of the word "man" is telling and important because it reflects the state of awareness in 1972.

This document, like the UN itself, is rooted in patriarchy.³⁰ Indigenous voices and female voices were almost entirely absent at Stockholm. I see no reason to erase that reality. It is important to understanding both the strengths and weaknesses in the Declaration and its legacy. It is part of a discounting of the critical roles that women play that continues to this day—as farmers, as scientists, as students, as citizens, as parents, as leaders, and as consumers. No UN declaration would be phrased like this now, but the fact is that gender mainstreaming is still a work in progress—so much so that gender equality is its own separate Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).³¹

III. COMMODIFICATION AND OVERCONSUMPTION

Once we get past the Preamble and into the substance of the Declaration, Principle 1 states:

Man has the fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being, and he bears a solemn responsibility to protect and improve the

[Page 760]

environment for present and future generations. In this respect, policies promoting or perpetuating apartheid, racial segregation, discrimination, colonial and other forms of oppression and foreign domination stand condemned and must be eliminated."³²

There is a lot packed into Principle 1. It contains the seeds of the still-emerging human right to a healthy environment,³³ and a clear articulation of both inter-generational and intra-generational equity.³⁴ Yet, the limits of international environmental law are equally on display. As framed in Principle 1, this document is entirely anthropocentric, focused not on the environment qua environment, but as the inhabitance of "man." Principle 3 of the Declaration does focus more directly on the environment per se, stating that "the capacity of the earth to produce vital renewable resources must be maintained and, wherever practicable, restored or improved."³⁵ But, even here the notion of the world as composed of resources—the essence of the extractive capitalist vision—remained uncontested. The object at Stockholm was not to turn away from commodification of the earth. Nor was it a rejection of an economy rooted in consumption—one resting on the inevitability and desirability of unending growth.

Although Stockholm occurred in the middle of the decolonial moment, the Declaration in many ways was a continuation of the colonial mindset—the exploitation mindset—albeit with different hands on the levers of power, and maybe different actors receiving the benefits. Thus Principle 21 famously declared sovereign control over natural resources,³⁶ codifying the

[Page 761]

earlier General Assembly resolution on the same topic.³⁷ Given the history of colonial expropriation and exploitation, this principle was obviously a necessary cornerstone for any international agreement. However, it was hardly sufficient for responding to entwined, systemic environmental challenges. The incorporation of the Trail Smelter principle of state responsibility as a corollary principle to sovereign control over natural resources offered only the merest feint at altering the environmental trajectory of overuse and degradation.³⁸ It failed to acknowledge that many so-called developed states were in fact ecological debtor nations.³⁹ Their industrialization rested on a global system of colonial exploitation and extraction. The result was disproportionate benefits and vast wealth consolidated in these developed countries, but at the cost of overexploitation and degradation—the very environmental problems they were now asking developing countries to join in resolving.⁴⁰ This inequity remains true to this

[Page 762]

day and is part of the reason that the...