Come June 2012, an incredibly significant event can take place in Brazil. Under the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the World Congress on Justice, Governance and Law for Environmental Sustainability (World Congress) will likely be organised to guide the Rio +20 process, what is known as because it will probably be held 19 years after the first Earth Summit in Rio in 1992.
The World Congress brings together attorney-generals, prosecutors, auditor-generals, chief justices and senior judges, along with parliamentarians from world wide. They will deliberate using a host of legal issues associated with environmental sustainability and sustainable development. The outcome in the World Congress is potentially far reaching.
When you are considering taking responsibility to the well-being in the Earth – through extension, of ourselves – we face stark choices. Do we adopt the under holistic approach of our own neighbours? Or should we recognise that what are the results to our neighbours is connected in our own well-being?
In recent times, fingers have already been pointed as a whole emerging nations. The statistics are incredibly startling.
Between 1989 and 2003, by way of example, China and India happen to be adding usually of 60 and 45 million tonnes of CO2 a year, respectively. China seems to add nine billion kWh of electricity per annum from coal, while India adds two billion kWh. The collective damage about the system these two neighbours is brutally evident to your visitor about bat roosting nations.
Countries take differing methods to energy use and apply different environmental standards. Understandably so, ever since the process is hostage to individual commercial interests and it is highly politicised.
But types is not just about individual actions – to expect collective actions. The well-being and sustainability of the Earth is within the collective interest of most nations.
This is certainly recognised. The 1972 United Nations Conference for the Human Environment in Stockholm formally asserted that the environment, ‘the natural plus the man-made’ was ‘essential for the well being of mankind, to your enjoyment of basic human rights, and towards the right of life itself’.
At the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, the technique of ‘sustainable development’ achieved international acceptance. Some 172 governments participated, with 108 sending heads of state or government, and nearly 2,400 representatives of non-government organisations attended. Twenty years on from Stockholm, that it was recognised that governments required to rethink and reformulate economic development to figure out ways to prevent the destruction of natural resources reducing pollution.
After the 1992 Earth Summit
The Earth Summit addressed the creation of toxic components, poisonous waste, alternative types of energy to switch fossil fuels, lowering of vehicle emissions, congestion, along with the health problems attributable to polluted air and smog and also the growing scarcity of water.
At the close in the Earth Summit, the conference secretary-general Maurice Strong referred to it as a ‘historic movement for humanity’.
What followed was the establishment and execution of countless multilateral environmental agreements. These set the earth rules and common cooperative or obligations instructed to deal with environmental issues, between biodiversity loss, global warming, drought and land degradation to waste management. They were efforts to enable countries to fulfil their global environmental obligations.
But although ambitious in intent, these agreements fell sadly well short if it came to implementation.
One problem was that countries lacked the proportions to manage environmental issues. Without the requisite skills or infrastructure, governance and law, attempts at reform and enforcement for that benefit of an environmental cause are doomed to fail; there will probably be more talk than action.
International governance
The need to the reform of international environmental governance is widely debated. There have recently been broader institutional reforms: The enhancement from the UNEP, establishing a fresh umbrella organisation for sustainable development, reforming the United Nations Economic and Social Council plus the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, enhancing institutional reforms and streamlining existing structures.
But for full scale action with an international level, we shall need to start nationally. The wheel must first turn within nations, because both versions must play its part in safeguarding the earth. Only then can actions be coordinated across nations, and just then could there be any an answer to compliance with elements of environmental law.