Duncan French

Sustainable Development Goals

Goal -1 No Poverty In 2013, an estimated 385 million children lived on less than US

Developing States and International Environmental Law: The Importance of Differentiated Responsibilities

1.90 per day. Still, these figures are unreliable due to huge gaps in data on the status of children worldwide. On average, 97 percent of countries have insufficient data to determine the state of impoverished children and make projections towards SDG Goal 1, and 63 percent of countries have no data on child poverty at all. By 2030, eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere.

The Role of the State and International Organizations inReconciling Sustainable Development and Globalization

The protection of the global environment has become one of the central objectives of the international community in recent decades. Issues such as climate change, the depletion of the ozone layer, and the loss of the biological diversity has resulted in a growing international awareness of the problems facing the planet. Moreover, there is also recognition that States will need to act more collaboratively at the international level if effective solutions are to be found to these problems. However, concurrently there is also recognition that many States have pressing socio-economic concerns of their own, and that they have neither the resources nor the capabilities with which to devote to such global issues—so called “developing” States. This article examines the response of international environmental law to these two, potentially opposing, trends, viz., the need for universalism, on the one hand, and sensitivity to the needs of developing States, on the other. In particular, the article will examine the emerging legal principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities”, as well as discussing the various means of operationalising it. Nevertheless, as will be discussed below, there is still much debate as to the conceptual basis of this principle—leading one to question its real aim. Is it to contribute to a fairer world system in which developed States recognise their historical responsibility for past environmental damage, or is it simply an expedient means of ensuring the participation of developing States in what are primarily Northern concerns?

From the Depths: Rich Pickings of Principles of Sustainable Development and General International Law on the Ocean Floor—the Seabed Disputes Chamber’s 2011 Advisory Opinion

The concepts of sustainable development and globalization have developed separately, with little recognition that there is significant overlap between them. This article seeks to argue that there is a need to try to reconcile these concepts and that, in particular, it is a fundamental mistake to consider globalization as inevitable whilst seeing sustainable development as an optional policy choice. In seeking to achieve this reconciliation, the role of the State and international organizations in maintaining public governance is reaffirmed.

Sustainable development and the 1991 Madrid protocol to the 1959 Antarctic treaty: The primacy of protection in a particularly sensitive environment

In February 2011, the Seabed Disputes Chamber of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea handed down its Advisory Opinion in Responsibilities and Obligations of States Sponsoring Persons and Entities with respect to Activities in the Area. Although primarily focused on governance of the deep seabed beyond national jurisdiction (‘the Area’), the Opinion has wider relevance for both international environmental law and general international law. More specifically, although sustainable development is not directly referenced in the Opinion, this article argues that it goes a long way towards strengthening many of the emerging normative rules associated with it. Using the International Law Association’s 2002 New Delhi Declaration of Principles of International Law relating to Sustainable Development as a framework, this article specifically analyses the Advisory Opinion’s contribution to the sustainable use of natural resources, the precautionary approach, common but differentiated responsibilities, and the principle of good governance.

The Global Goals: Formalism Foregone, Contested Legality and “Re-imaginings” of International Law

Abstract The notion of sustainable development has become, over the last fifteen years, an integral part of international environmental law and policy. It is recognition that environmental issues do not exist in a vacuum, but rather arc part of much wider structural issues involving both economic and social dimensions. However, does this concern for sustainable development now mean that protecting the natural environment is no longer about ecological conservation per se, but rather is simply abour ensuring an adequate environment to maintain economic development? And if so, what of those environments where the economic value is a secondary consideration? Or where human activity has a disproportionate effect? Can sustainable development be interpreted in a way that reconciles these seemingly opposite demands? This paper examines these issues from the perspective of the 1991 Madrid Protocol on Environmental Protection to the 1959 Antarctic Treaty. It will suggest that sustainable development is a broader co...

Evolution in Investment Treaty Law and Arbitration: The European Union as a global investment partner: Law, policy and rhetoric in the attainment of development assistance and market liberalisation?

The Global Goals adopted in 2015 are the next phase in the UN’s plans to tackle poverty and the systemic causes of under-development and other global problems. As with the previous Millennium Development Goals, the Global Goals are expressly political in nature. This paper considers the function, status and role of international law in global development and, in particular, how the Global Goals might be perceived in legal terms. The paper rejects the argument that they represent customary international law due to weaknesses in State practice and opinio juris, and is unpersuaded that it is helpful to categorise them as soft law as their purpose is aspirational and not regulatory. Thus, the Goals exist in an arena of contested legality. Two “re-imaginings” of international law are proposed; first, by connecting them to the non-binding Maastricht Principles on the Extraterritorial Obligations of States in the Area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and secondly, by linking them to ideas of international solidarity. The paper concludes that neither provides easy solutions. Nevertheless, what both do—in their own way—is to force us to question why international law is not viewed as an acceptable conduit for the advancement of global development?

‘FROM SEOUL WITH LOVE’ – THE CONTINUING RELEVANCE OF THE 1986 SEOUL ILA DECLARATION ON PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT OF PRINCIPLES OF PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL LAW RELATING TO A NEW INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ORDER

The European Unions interest and involvement in foreign direct investment (FDI) is by no means new. However, it has only been comparatively recently that one has been able to begin to distinguih the particularities of a specific EU approach to FDI, especially when placed within a broader developmental context. The approach has been most visible during the ongoing negotiations of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) grouping of States. Though the EU-ACP relationship is often promtoed (by the EU) as a model of mutual and benign co-operation between economically divergent States, the relationship highlights, in fact, political and normative challenges for both sides. This chapter, in particular, considers the recent 2008 EPA between the EU and the Caribbean, and wonders whether the rhetoric of the linkages between development and FDI liberalization is matched by the reality.

A critique of the Global Pact for the environment: a stillborn initiative or the foundation for Lex Anthropocenae?

The purpose of this article is to reconsider, in the light of global developments and other challenges, attempts over the past four decades to agree principles and rules of international law relating to the establishment and operation of a New International Economic Order (NIEO). For its critics, the NIEO was a one-sided attempt, based on unsound legal and economic principles, to undermine the integrity of the global economic system, a system that had played a vital role in permitting the world to recover following the tragedy of the Second World War. For its proponents, it was, on the other hand, a life-and-death attempt to reorder a system that was perpetually and unfairly biased against the poor majority; ‘life-and-death’ because the poverty that results from lack of development was not (nor continues to be) an abstract issue. In particular, in seeking to narrow the fi eld of enquiry, this article will review the attempt by the non-governmental International Law Association (ILA)– acting through its international committee on the topic – to forge a clearer North-South consensus on this matter through the adoption of its 1986 Seoul Declaration on Progressive Development of Principles of Public International Law relating to a New International Economic Order. In consciously trying to overcome some of the more overt political divisions within the UN General Assembly, the ILA sought to find carefully crafted compromises on such topics as permanent sovereignty over natural resources, specifi cally expropriation, the right to development, common heritage of mankind, as well as on broader issues of equality, equity and economic solidarity. Now, over twenty years after Seoul, it is fitting to consider whether the 1986 Declaration, in trying to move the debate forward, ultimately proved little more than a symbolic, but largely futile, gesture. Was this legal desiratum just too idealistic and utopian, particularly in the light of changing global circumstances and political realities?

In the Matter of the South China Sea Arbitration: Republic of Philippines v People’s Republic of China, Arbitral Tribunal Constituted under Annex VII to the 1982 United Nations Law of the Sea Convention, Case No. 2013-19, Award of 12 July 2016

In May 2018, the process which may ultimately lead to the negotiation of a legally binding Global Pact for the environment formally commenced under the auspices of the United Nations General Assembly. Expectations for the Pact are high, evidenced in particular by its multiple and overlapping objectives: to serve as a generic binding instrument of international environmental law (IEL) principles; to integrate, consolidate, unify and ultimately entrench many of the fragmented principles of IEL; and to constitute the first global environmental human rights instrument. In the wake of the impending intergovernmental process, the paper offers a thorough critique of the draft Pact in its present iteration. We do so with the aim of evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the present draft Pact by interrogating: (a) its diplomatic and symbolic relevance and possible unique contribution at the policy level to global environmental law and governance, and (b) its potential at the operational level of IEL and global environmental governance, focusing on the extent to which the draft Pact accommodates both existing and more recent rules and principles for environmental protection. As the Pact’s primary ambition is to become a universally binding global treaty, it would be churlish not to recognise its potential for innovation, as well as the considerable opportunity that the negotiation of the Pact will have to generate broad-sweeping and positive impacts. However, our central thesis is that only if the Global Pact were to incorporate ambitious normative provisions to strengthen those public and private global governance efforts that aim to halt the deterioration of Earth system integrity, as well as to maintain and improve integrity, will it be able to offer a firm foundation of the type of Anthropocene Law, termed here as the Lex Anthropocenae, required to confront head-on the deep socio-ecological crisis of the Anthropocene.