The High-level Declaration for Stockholm+50: A Renewal of Past Commitments and Creation of New Commitments to Mother Earth 50 Years On

The earth is sick, the question that comes to mind is, have we done enough? Are we delivering on the commitments we made fifty years ago? Is there a common understanding as to how we are to implement our common principles or are we making way for development at the expense of the environment?

The Anthropocene Epoch has elevated the importance of the progressive development and implementation of international environmental law in the global agenda. One of the key and fundamental cornerstones of international environmental law are principles. Principles of international environmental law have and continue to be one of the essential tools in addressing environmental degradation at the global and national levels through normative expectations and binding obligations for implementation[8]. As Nicolas correctly states, “[e]nvironmental law provides a propitious breeding ground for principles, for while it is difficult to agree on fixed precise rules at the international level, it is far easier to come to a public understanding about indefinite principles that can progressively be given more concrete form”[9].

Since the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm (Stockholm Conference), principles of international environmental law have evolved and can be found in over 500 instruments adopted to-date, each addressing a specific environmental problem[10]. This is a significant progress in the development and evolution of principles of international environmental law. However, the problem of fragmentation and the lack of a single framework to unify the fundamental principles of international environmental law, to guide and coordinate actions in addressing environmental problems, remains a problem[11].

In 2018, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 72/277 to determine the feasibility of a Global Pact for the Environment (GPE). The proposed GPE was envisaged to act as a third international Covenant, codifying the principles enshrined in the 1992 Rio Declaration and would share a similar status to the 1949 Universal Declaration on Human Rights[12]. The GPE would establish “the universal right to an ecologically sound environment as a human right at the international level, able to be invoked in international, regional, and national courts of law”.[13] It would also unify the guiding principles of international environmental law, both current and emerging, in one internally coherent document thereby clarifying points of tension in international environmental law that have arisen given the existing sectoral approach to governance[14].  

Although the Open-Ended working group did not recommend the adoption of the Global Pact, it recommended as part of the future work the preparation of a political declaration for the United Nations High Level Meeting in the context of the “commemoration of the creation of the United Nations Environment Programme by the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment […] with a view to strengthening the implementation of international environmental law and international environmental governance”[15].