The process towards a Global Pact for the Environment at the United Nations: From legal ambition to political dilution

Abstract

The process 'Towards a global pact for the environment' began with a French initiative on the back of the diplomatic success achieved by the adoption of the Paris Agreement on climate change at the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP 21) to the United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2015. 1 The idea to prepare such an instrument originated from the work of the Committee on the Environment of the Club des Juristes, a French legal think tank chaired by Laurent Fabius, President of the French Constitutional Court and former COP 21 President. The purpose of the pact would be to respond to the fragmentation of international environmental law by adopting an international treaty which would lay down its fundamental principles and give more coherence to this branch of international law. To that end, the Club des Juristes put together an international network of over 100 jurists from all legal traditions and representing over 40 nationalities, called the Group of Experts for the Pact. After September 2016, the Group of Experts prepared the preliminary draft for a global treaty on the environment. The definitive version of this draft was adopted after final refinements were incorporated on 24 June 2017 at an academic event held at the Sorbonne. In September 2017, the promoters of the initiative published a white paper entitled 'Towards a Global Pact for the Environment', which included the articulated text of the proposed draft convention. 2 1 The idea of a global treaty for the environment is not new. In 1987, the Brundtland report on 'Our Common Future' envisaged a Convention on Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development to be prepared by the United Nations General Assembly ('Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future' (1987) <https://susta inabl edeve lopme nt.un.org/conte nt/docum ents/5987o ur-commo n-future.pdf> paras 85-86). In 1989, Professor Alexandre Kiss advocated a general convention that would declare the obligation to protect and preserve the whole biosphere, set out the fundamental principles derived from that obligation and included the provisions required to clarify its implementation, as with the United Nations covenants on human rights (A Kiss, 'Nouvelles tendances en droit international de l'environnement' (1989) 32 German Yearbook of International Law 241, 258). In 1995, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), in cooperation with the International Council for Environmental Law (ICEL), presented the text of the Draft Covenant on Environment and Development as a model for a comprehensive conventional instrument on principles and rules related to environment and development (available at <https://porta ls.iucn.org/libra ry/efile s/docum ents/EPLP-031-rev3.pdf>). In 2017, the Centre International de Droit Comparé de l'Environnement (CIDCE) of the University of Limoges presented a draft of the International Covenant on the Human Right to the Environment as a possible third pact additional to the 1966 International ...

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