Keywords: international environmental law, natural resources, world administrative law, private international law, territoriality A detailed table has been drawn up listing the international environmental conventions to which the Union is already a party or signatory. Excellent book with contributions from many leading experts on extraterritoriality and human rights. It addresses the main concerns in five constituent elements: obligation, jurisdiction, causality, division of responsibilities, remedies and liability. Although it focuses on the economic, social and cultural rights studied, it also refers to the main jurisprudence in the field of civil and political rights. By analyzing specific human rights (i.e. of the rights to life, health, food, housing, water) and some cross-cutting issues (environmental law and refugee law), this book examines the theoretical basis for asserting states` extraterritorial human rights obligations, as well as how foreign policy decisions can affect the human rights of individuals in third countries and how states could become more accountable. the negative effects of these policies. This chapter traces the origin and history of international environmental law. Historical research on the emergence of environmental legal concepts, principles and institutions was mainly focused on research and comparison of developments at the national legal level. Nevertheless, the interface with international law is easy to document; the emergence of a set of ecological “neighbourhood” rules has long been observed in cross-border relations between states.
Most accounts of the historical development of international environmental law distinguish three major “periods”, “epochs” or “phases”: the “traditional era” until around 1970 (i.e. before the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972); “modernity” from Stockholm to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 (UNCED); and Rio`s “postmodernism.” A distinctive feature of traditional international environmental law was ultimately its territoriality. A very neglected aspect in this context has been the extraterritorial application of multilateral environmental agreements. These policy objectives can only be achieved if a number of important international environmental agreements are actively supported and properly implemented, both at Union and global level. The book focuses on the extraterritorial application of three human rights treaties: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the Convention against Torture; includes an in-depth analysis of their preparatory work and the decisions of the courts and supervisory authorities responsible for their interpretation and application. The Action Programme also includes a priority horizontal objective to help the Union address international environmental and climate challenges more effectively. It recalls that the UNION has a good track record of accession to multilateral environmental agreements and calls on the EU and its Member States to participate proactively in international negotiations on new and emerging issues. Peter H. Sand is a lecturer in international environmental law at the University of Munich and former legal adviser/environmental officer for several international organizations and institutions (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), World Conservation Union, United Nations Environment Programme, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, United Nations Conference on Environment and Development and World Bank). Most environmental problems are cross-border and often global, and they can only be effectively solved through international cooperation. For this reason, the Treaty of Lisbon states that one of the main objectives of EU environmental policy is to promote action at international level to address regional or global environmental problems, and in particular to combat climate change. The Union actively participates in the preparation, ratification and implementation of multilateral environmental agreements.
The conduct of States may affect the human rights of persons outside their national territory. This phenomenon is increasingly attracting the attention of the international community due to factors such as increased military intervention by States, economic globalization and the outsourcing of border controls. This article deals with the question of whether States must respect the human rights treaties to which they have acceded when acting abroad. Most human rights treaties contain the so-called jurisdiction clause, which aims to identify the group of persons to whom States owe their human rights obligations under the treaty. However, the meaning of the word “jurisdiction” in the sense of human rights law is by no means a resolved issue. No two jurisdiction clauses contain the same wording, and the criteria developed by the supervisory bodies are extremely casuistic and variable. States have also not adopted a common position, and some of them explicitly violate the extraterritorial scope of their human rights obligations. .