Thesis

A framework for achieving consistently effective protection of the global environment

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Awarding institution
  • University of Strathclyde
Date of award
  • 2012
Thesis identifier
  • T13218
Qualification Level
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Department, School or Faculty
Abstract
  • The responsibility for the legal protection of the global environment has fallen to international environmental law. Since The Stockholm Conference of 1972, which arguably represented the birth of contemporary environmental protection efforts, an expansive body of laws in the form of treaties directed at regulating various aspects of the environment have been agreed to by states. While these have achieved some measure of success in protecting the global environment the only development to rival this ever-increasing body of laws has been the continuing decline of the environment. The fact that environmental decline persists despite such an extensive and intricate body of international environmental law suggests that there is a substantial gap between law and the environment. However, the accompanying fact that effective environmental protection is also achieved through law also suggests that this gap is not a consistent feature of environmental protection. The thesis explores how effective environmental protection can be achieved through bridging this gap between law and the environment in a manner that would facilitate consistent effective environmental protection. It commences from the observation that the gap between law and the environment and thus, lack of consistently effective environmental protection, is widely attributed to flawed law-making, implementation of laws and the enforcement of international environmental law. As such, in existing perspectives, bridging the gap between law and the environment has been pursued through piecemeal arguments that seek to address flawed law-making, implementation of laws and the enforcement of international environmental law individually. The inability of these piecemeal approaches to offer convincing frameworks for bridging the gap between law and the environment has led to alternative arguments that have highlighted that the difficulties in law-making, implementation and enforcement are merely symptomatic of the more systemic difficulties that the concept of sovereignty poses to effective regulation. Thus, it is argued that addressing sovereignty would bridge the gap between law and the environment. In light of these latter approaches' inability to offer frameworks that have effectively bridged the gap between law and the environment, the thesis offers a constitutionalism-based framework that would bridge the gap between law and the environment thus securing consistently effective environmental protection.
Resource Type
DOI
Date Created
  • 2012
Former identifier
  • 947838

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