Move Over, Paris: New Global Pact Could Finally Grant Planet Earth a Right to Survival

Despite any claims in the press, nothing new has progressed in international environmental law for a few decades. Activity has been focused on fine-tuning the existing agreements; but now moves are afoot to finally grant planet Earth a right to survival.

Actually, international environmental governance and law haven’t been around for that long. A few treaties pre-date the 1970s, but focused environmental governance began in 1972 with the Stockholm Declaration, when governments recognized that biological diversity is a global asset for present and future generations—that Earth’s biological resources are vital to humanity's economic and social development. Following this foundation declaration came a mushrooming of treaties and agreements in the '70s and '80s, all seeking to address specific areas that threaten Earth's biological heritage.

There are now over 500 international treaties dealing with the environment. Many of these are small, or regionally specific. Most have a distinct focus, like banning the release of chlorofluorocarbons into the atmosphere, combatting the illegal wildlife trade or reducing the impact of shipping. The last major step was the Convention on Biological Diversity in 1992. This treaty was intended as the unifier—the rallying point around which everything else would spin. But CBD blended into the crowd, and since 1992, nothing new has come along to energize the governance arena again.

This is not to suggest no attention has been directed to managing the environmental commons. A regular flurry of diplomatic activity is focused on fine-tuning the existing agreements around specific issues. Even the much-heralded Paris Agreement is progress against a program that was established many decades ago. Meetings are held, small progress steps are made, but there is no vigor in the system. Meanwhile, the threats to species and ecosystems have never been so great. Species extinctions, caused by human activities, continue at an alarming rate.

All of the 500 environmental treaties have been hard won. The detail each contains is important—the world is a complicated place and cannot be managed with simplistic motherhood statements. But governments are not bound by them; they can abide or ignore the treaties as they please. Despite the effort that went into their creation, environmental treaties are often referred to as "soft law" because they don't have any legally binding force.

For the past decade or so governments have complained that the field is now too crowded, complicated and reporting to them all is duplicated effort. To calm the disquiet, the United Nations General Assembly elevated the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), giving it greater impetus through a new United National Environment Assembly. The idea is for UNEA to be a focal point for addressing important issues from different perspectives. For instance, UNEA3 taking place in November 2017 will focus on pollution in all its forms.

Elevating UNEP and creating UNEA is still yet another incremental step that just helps to better focus the old issues. But recently, something new was born. Still in its infancy, a new Global Pact for the Environment is proposed to bring soft environmental law into the realm of hard law. If the U.N. General Assembly adopts the pact, hard law teeth will be given to the existing environment treaties. The pact will become a unifying legal document to sit over the complicated detail of the 500 treaties. Suddenly, international environmental law will have coherence because everyone will be paying attention.

If it survives to maturity, the pact will do more. It will also establish principles that compel nations and other legal persons to protect the environment, promote sustainable development and intergenerational equity, and ensure the right of access to information and environmental justice.

If the pact is adopted by the United Nations, environmental rights will have legal and binding power. For the first time, humans will have agreed that Earth and all her inhabitants have a right to survival. That is something worth fighting for.