Environmental Legislation and Law

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

May 19 2003 (IPS) - The need to protect the environment produced the emergence worldwide of an environmental legal framework in the form of laws, agreements, regulations, decrees and treaties, of national or international scope, requiring a high level of expertise among environmental lawyers. A large portion of this legislation was produced during the past 30 years, the response to growing concern about the fate of planet Earth. And although the effectiveness of some of the legal tools is questionable, their mere existence provides a basis, a motive, for the thousands of pro-environment campaigns that in a not-so-distant past lacked even that simple reinforcement.

In today's world there are numerous international agreements, laws and other legal documents related to the use and conservation of natural resources and to the environment in general, and this is reflected in the Internet, where resources abound, generally aimed at experts in environmental law.

There are services like ECOLEX, an international database run with the backing of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the World Conservation Union (IUCN), which offers information about environmental legislation the world over.

Part of the resources in the database are provided by FAOLEX, of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), described as “a comprehensive and up-to-date computerized legislative database, the world's largest electronic collection of national laws and regulations, as well as treaties, on food, agriculture and renewable natural resources.”

As occurs in other legal spheres, the application of environmental law is not easy. That is why there also exist support mechanisms, like the UNEP's Environmental Law Program for Latin America and the Caribbean, which provides technical assistance and training.

In the case of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), in addition to facilitating searches of legislation from around the world, it aims “to solve environmental problems and promote sustainable societies through the use of law.”