Recommendation N° 7. For a world convention on environmental assessments

Páginas56-57

Page 56

The participants in the global meeting of lawyers and environmental law associations are conscious of the reciprocal impacts of economic activities and their consequences on the environment and the need to intensify international co-operation in the field of environmental assessment for a better and more rational management of the environment and for sustainable development.

They encourage the commencement of a process for the drafting of an enforceable world convention on environmental assessment and sustainability, based on the followi ng considerations:

  1. Many States have adopted measures to ensure that environmental impact assessment is carried out as part of their laws and administrative regulations and their national policy. But existing national laws and regulations do not provide for the same requirements nor reflect harmonized criteria. This lack of uniformity of national laws on assessments has adverse effects on the protection of the environment and can generate distortions with unfair effects on international trade.

  2. International jurisprudence, particularly of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), has found "that there is, in general international law, a duty to undertake an environmental impact assessment when the proposed industrial activity may have an adverse impact in a transboundary context, and in particular, on a shared resource". However, the ICJ recognizes also that "general international law does not specify the scope and content of an environmental impact assessment" and that therefore "it is up to each State to determine, in its national legislation or in the authorization process, the specific content of the environmental assessment required in each case". This clearly incomplete, normative framework gives rise to an urgent demand for the development of harmonized rules, agreed upon by States, in an international convention of global scope, to set minimum standards that must be complied with by national and international instruments dealing with environmental assessment and sustainability.

  3. Currently, national and international provisions on environmental assessments do not generally apply to areas located beyond national jurisdiction. Legal instruments to fill this gap and to strengthen environmental protection of the common areas of the planet should be put in place as a matter of urgency.

  4. In drafting the Convention, the following...

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