Abstract
Legal challenges associated with environmental issues are among the biggest in the world, since it requires a comprehensive understanding of the environment without any political boundaries. Acknowledging new paradigms is only possible by integrating the quality of life for every human being to the law system as a supreme guardianship good. A common factor connecting the concept of environment and sustainable development is the fact that all three converge around the human being, the central protagonist responsible both individually and collectively for his own future and the future of the planet. The gender perspective must be integrated into the sustainable development management process in order to improve quality of life since the concept of equality it covers also implies gender equity. To analyze how gender is incorporated into international environmental protection and to make adequate conclusions about its current state, the most relevant juridical instruments have been considered.
TopIntroduction
The environmental issue intertwines two basic concepts: environment and sustainable development. Its legal approach constitutes one of the greatest challenges that law has faced, since it requires an understanding of the environment as a whole, whose elements interact with each other with such a degree of interdependence that, not recognizing political borders, they reach a broader dimension by projecting at regional and global levels. This understanding can only be achieved by incorporating the quality of life of the human being into the legal system, as the supreme good of protection.
The law has been conceptualized, by a traditional thesis, as the fair social order: the set of norms adjusted to human nature that enables the best integral development of the human being, the achievement of intermediate or natural ends in the interrelation of life itself in society (Newman et al., 2004).
Not because it is classic, the outlined concept has lost validity or relevance, since its fundamental value is based on highlighting as a guiding guideline that the human being must be captured by the law in all its dimensions and that this subject is inserted and develops in an environment that it conditions it, at the same time that it is conditioned and modified by its action. This is its reality, formed by the natural and the socio-cultural in mutual interrelation, constituting an intimate and inseparable environment-development equation, which the law must necessarily regulate to achieve its ultimate goal.
This is so and has been since the beginning of time, but not the capture of environmental problems, whose treatment cannot be outside the law.
Today confronts us with a world whose social and political structure becomes more complex day by day, whose productive and commercial phenomena continually change in terms of their protagonists and relationship of forces, which sees traditional borders disappear due to advances in communication and watches with astonishment the scientific and technological advances with the consequent impact on the environment. The law must elaborate a response so as not to fall into the request of principles of allowing the subject of its tutelage, the human being, to see his fundamental rights violated.
In the search for that response to the visualization and recognition of the great environmental problems—constantly evidenced by the daily reality of humanity—legal science has recognized the environment as a legal category (Buckingham & Le Masson, 2017).
Its conceptualization has presented epistemological difficulties, concealing other conceptual and even philosophical problems under the guise of semantic problems at the time of its definition.
We agree in considering the environment as the systematization of natural, social and cultural phenomena, processes and values that condition the life of man in society and the development of the rest of living organisms and the state of inert elements in a given time and space., in an integrating and dialectical synthesis of relations of exchange of man with the various natural resources, exhaustible and non-exhaustible in economic terms.
The environment, thus understood, is inextricably related to the concept of sustainable development and quality of life.
Sustainable development aims to achieve quality of life without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Both concepts overlap around the central protagonist, addressee and individual and socially responsible for his destiny and the future of the planet: the human being.
From this approach clearly arises the need for a systemic and globalizing vision of reality, which allows the understanding of the whole and the valorization of the part as a bearer of aptitude for the generation and determination of changes. This necessarily implies the recognition of new paradigms.
In this sense, the law, as a social science, grants the individual his role as transformer of society, which leads to the hierarchization of the human being, the first and last subject and recipient of any legal system, while at the same time increasing his responsibilities. .
In its institutional face, there is a revaluation of local governments, based on the principle of immediacy that grants greater efficiency in the detection and action in the face of specific problems.
The legal response to the environmental question is substantially determined by the conclusions emanating from other scientific fields, given the interdisciplinary and globalizing nature of the subject, but it cannot be perceived as secondary, since it addresses fundamental questions about the orientation of a policy connected with the basic ideas of justice and equity.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Public Participation and Transparency: Identified as essential conditions for “accountable governments...industrial concerns,” and organizations generally, public participation and transparency are presented by UNEP as requiring “effective protection of the human right to hold and express opinions and to seek, receive and impart ideas, etc. a right of access to appropriate, comprehensible and timely information held by governments and industrial concerns on economic and social policies regarding the sustainable use of natural resources and the protection of the environment, without imposing undue financial burdens upon the applicants and with adequate protection of privacy and business confidentiality,” and “effective judicial and administrative proceedings.” These principles are present in environmental impact assessment, laws requiring publication and access to relevant environmental data, and administrative procedures.
Sustainable Development: Defined by the United Nations Environment Programme as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” sustainable development may be considered together with the concepts of “integration” (development cannot be considered in isolation from sustainability) and “interdependence” (social and economic development, and environmental protection, are interdependent). Laws mandating environmental impact assessment and requiring or encouraging development to minimize environmental impacts may be assessed against this principle. The modern concept of sustainable development was discussed at the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm Conference) and the driving force behind the 1983 World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED, or Bruntland Commission). In 1992, the first UN Earth Summit resulted in the Rio Declaration, Principle 3 of which reads: “The right to development must be fulfilled to equitably meet developmental and environmental needs of present and future generations.” Sustainable development has been a core concept of international environmental discussion ever since, including at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Earth Summit 2002) and the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Earth Summit 2012, or Rio+20).
Polluter Pays Principle: The polluter pays principle stands for the idea that “the environmental costs of economic activities, including the cost of preventing potential harm, should be internalized rather than imposed upon society at large.” All issues related to responsibility for cost for environmental remediation and compliance with pollution control regulations involve this principle.
Prevention: The concept of prevention etc. can perhaps better be considered an overarching aim that gives rise to a multitude of legal mechanisms, including prior assessment of environmental harm, licensing, or authorization that set out the conditions for operation and the consequences for violation of the conditions, as well as the adoption of strategies and policies. Emission limits and other product or process standards, the use of best available techniques, and similar techniques can all be seen as applications of the concept of prevention.
Transboundary Responsibility: Defined in the international law context as an obligation to protect one’s environment. UNEP considers transboundary responsibility at the international level to prevent damage to neighboring environments at the international level as a potential limitation on the rights of the sovereign state. Laws that limit externalities imposed upon human health and the environment may be assessed against this principle.
Equity: Defined by UNEP to include intergenerational equity—“the right of future generations to enjoy a fair level of the common patrimony”—and intragenerational equity—“the right of all people within the current generation to fair access to the current generation’s entitlement to the Earth’s natural resources”—environmental equity considers the present generation under an obligation to account for long-term impacts of activities and to act to sustain the global environment and resource base for future generations. Pollution control and resource management laws may be assessed against this principle.
Precautionary Principle: One of the most commonly encountered and controversial principles of environmental law, the Rio Declaration formulated the precautionary principle as follows, to protect the environment, States shall widely apply the precautionary approach according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation. The principle may play a role in any debate over the need for environmental regulation.
Environmental: Law: Environmental law is a collective term encompassing aspects of the law that protect the environment. A related but distinct set of regulatory regimes, now strongly influenced by environmental legal principles, focuses on managing specific natural resources, such as forests, minerals, or fisheries. Other areas, such as environmental impact assessment, may not fit neatly into either category but are nonetheless important components of environmental law. Previous research found that when environmental law reflects moral values for betterment, legal adoption is more likely to be successful, usually in well-developed regions. In less-developed states, changes in moral values are necessary for successful legal implementation when environmental law differs from moral values.