Environmental laws are made to manage natural resources and environment. The ‘natural resources’ and ‘environmental quality’ include areas such as air and water pollution , forests and wildlife, hazardous waste, agricultural practices, wetlands and land use planning. International environment law is a body of international law concerned with protecting the environment, primarily through bilateral and multilateral international agreements.
The day by day increasing Global and regional environmental issues are the subject of international law.
Customary International law is an important source of international environment law. These are the rules and regulations that countries follow as a matter of custom and they also force state to follow it.
Numerous legally binding international agreements encompass a wide variety issues areas, from terrestrial, marine and atmospheric pollution toto wildlife and biodiversity protection. Protocols are subsidiary agreements built from a primary treaty. They exist in many areas of international law but are especially useful in the environmental field, where they may be used to regularly incorporate recent scientific knowledge. The most widely known protocol in international environmental law is the Kyoto Protocol, which followed from the United Nations Framework Convention on climate change.
International Environmental Law covers many areas of the environment and is essentially designed to protect and improve the environment as a whole. Environmental laws are not created at a local and national level in the UK but also at European community level and international level too. It is understandable that as climate change and other environmental matters are being witnessed on a global scale, countries should have to come together to tackle them. International conventions have been created that, should countries agree to be a part of, would make them culpable if they were shown to be falling under the forms of the agreement.
There are numerous areas of the environment that need protecting and this is why local, national and international Environmental Laws have been passed. Air pollution, climate change and waste management are just a few area that will be governed by their own laws.
The United Nations convened the first major international conference on the environment, the United Nations conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE), in Stockholm, sweden, in 1972. In addition to environmental issues, the UNCHE also addressed the related issues of sustainable development.
In 1982, the United Nations opened United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea for signatures. UNCLOS is the primary international agreement regarding protection the use and protection of the oceans. In 1983, the United Nations General Assembly convened the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development or the Brundtland Commission.