> customary international law can't even agree about how the air commons should be treated.
Customary international law does agree generally about how the air commons should be treated. That is the point of Judge Weeramantry's opinion and now the awesome SDGs. But yes, you are right, the news has not filtered down to the local level. (;-)
Judge Christopher Weeramantry’s 1997 Hungary/Slovakia opinion as Vice-President of the International Court of Justice is an impassioned and powerful argument for the principle of sustainable development as customary international law. See http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/92/7383.pdf.
That means first that sustainable development has been used so often as reason in case after case and not just in western international law but also in the law traditions of Sri Lanka (Judge Weeramantry’s home country), India, China, Africa, and indigenous peoples in the Americas, that it has become an integral part of international law.
In consequence, no party can declare themselves above the principle of sustainable development. They cannot say my nation does not agree, or invoke private property rights to say they are beyond the reach of international obligation when their actions transgress “the global concerns of humanity as a whole”.
Amongst other great quotes from the document: “Natural resources are not individually, but collectively, owned, and a principle of their use is that they should be used for the maximum service of people. There should be no waste, and there should be a maximization of the use of plant and animal species, while preserving their regenerative powers. The purpose of development is the betterment of the condition of the people.”
Building on Weeramantry’s opinion, the UN in 2015 unanimously adopted the awesome Sustainable Development Goals. Now there is no doubt about the status of sustainable development as customary international law. Now the question is how to bring the global local.
The juggernaut of Law as it is practiced at the national and local levels, allows private property and national sovereignty to steamroll the need to protect Planet Earth. We need a massive global movement for a great transition to a sustainable world, and as a key part of that movement, we need in case after case to appeal to the principle of sustainable development in local courts everywhere in the world.
Here are a couple more paragraphs from the Judge's opinion:
"We have entered an era of international law in which international law subserves not only the interests of individual States, but looks beyond them and their parochial concerns to the greater interests of humanity and planetary welfare. In addressing such problems, which transcend the individual rights and obligations of the litigating States, international law will need to look beyond procedural rules fashioned for purely inter partes litigation."
"When we enter the arena of obligations which operate erga omnes rather than inter partes, rules based on individual fairness and procedural compliance may be inadequate. The great ecological questions now surfacing will call for thought upon this matter. International environmental law will need to proceed beyond weighing the rights and obligations of parties within a closed compartment of individual State self-interest, unrelated to the global concerns of humanity as a whole."
#gr8transition #sdgs #un_goals
