International Environmental Law at Its Semicentennial: the Stockholm Legacy

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

International Environmental Law at Its Semicentennial: The Stockholm Legacy

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Hosted by the Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law and the Dean Rusk International Law Center on October 8, 2021, in Athens, Georgia and online

Melissa J. Durkee^*

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The 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment produced the Stockholm Declaration, an environmental manifesto that forcefully declared a human right to environmental health and birthed the field of modern international environmental law.¹ The historic event powerfully "dramatized . . . the unity and fragility of the biosphere,"² sparking a remarkable period of international legal innovation and cooperation on environmental protection in the decades to come. This special issue, in celebration of the Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law's 50th anniversary volume, evaluates the legacy of the Stockholm Declaration and the legal movement it launched.

That half-century ago conference in Stockholm, Sweden marked an early awakening by the community of international diplomats, lawyers, and civil society organizations to the idea that the environment is a matter of global concern. Other matters preoccupied them at this time: one was the Cold War hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union and the resulting bipolar checkmate in global affairs; another, the efforts by many countries to escape the bonds of colonialism. Only a few international treaties concerned environmental matters, and most of them were then very new.³ Yet, the effects of industrialized society on the environment were intruding into public consciousness. Rachel Carson's 1962 book "Silent Spring" had shocked many readers into concern for the "internationally devastating effects of certain chemicals on wildlife,"⁴ and a series of environmental disasters around the world had also sparked environmental awareness and concern.⁵ Some countries, like the United States, had begun to pass domestic legislation aimed at curbing harmful pollution and protecting natural resources.⁶

Against this backdrop, Sweden proposed that the time was ripe for a United Nations conference on the human environment. Despite the formidable geopolitical challenges of the time, Sweden successfully convened 113 nations and at least 250 non-governmental organizations in Stockholm to develop the principles by which international environmental law should

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develop. Those twenty-six principles, enshrined in the Stockholm Declaration, set the course of international environmental law. In the fifty years since, the international community has negotiated hundreds of agreements covering topics as diverse and important as protection of biological diversity and endangered species, transboundary movements of hazardous waste and chemicals, acid rain, depletion of the ozone layer, and climate change. As Edith Brown Weiss has observed, the two decades after the Stockholm Declaration produced more than 1,100 international legal instruments concerned either fully or partially with the environment.⁷ The Stockholm Conference also led to the development of a dedicated United Nations body concerned with addressing environmental issues, the United Nations Environment Programme.

The Stockholm Declaration can be rightly celebrated for inspiring this enormously productive period of international cooperation; for putting environmental issues on the international legal agenda for the next fifty years; and for driving the development of environmental law at the domestic level around the world. At the same time, the Declaration's distinctive framing of environmental problems and solutions deeply influenced these abundant subsequent laws, and here its legacy is mixed.

In celebration of its 50th anniversary volume, the Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law convened a conference in concert with the Dean Rusk International Law Center at the University of Georgia School of Law to reflect on the Stockholm Declaration's legacy. The conference, which took place in Athens, Georgia, and online on October 8, 2021, featured an array of experts from academia and practice who critically...