The Transformation of International Environmental Law

Faced with environmental challenges which are becoming more serious, urgent, and global, international law has emerged as an essential instrument for state cooperation and an influential element in the harmonization and revitalization of domestic laws.

At the same time international law has had to adapt; law-making has become more innovative and fresh mechanisms for implementation have been created. Over the last thirty years international environmental law has therefore experienced significant normative and institutional change.

The authors of the present book set out to emphasize these changes, showing how environmental challenges have shaken and sometimes transformed the core categories and concepts of international law. Thus, in addition to being a book about environmental law, this is a work which also charts the way in which international protection of the environment has disrupted general international law.

This book is the fruit of a longstanding collaborative project carried out at the Centre for International and European Studies and Research (CERIC). The publication in May 2010 of the French version of the proceedings of an international symposium held under the aegis of the French Society for International Law in Aix-en-Provence in June 2009 drew the first conclusions: Le droit face aux enjeux environnementaux, (Paris, Pedone, 2010). The present book takes them up partly and extends the lessons learned, this time in English.