BRAC University

LAW 346

1 answer: The Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment held in 1972. The Stockholm
is the baseline of modern international environment law; it is so important that all the domestics
laws developed afterwards had been actually derived from the Stockholm declaration. It is the
first global gathering by the states, where they recognized the term “environment” and in Para 1
of the Stockholm declaration refereed to “mans environment” also added that it is highly
important for us to come up with legal obligations in order to make our environment sustainable.
The gathering plays a vital role, as states across the world joined and talked about importance of
protecting environment.
Prior to Stockholm, through different treaty based mechanism environment law has been
developed but most of the domestic laws actually derived after Stockholm conference. We can
see a core change of Environment law from Stockholm conference to Rio de Janeiro .In June
1992, countries met in Rio de Janeiro for celebrate twentieth anniversary of Stockholm
conference.
One of the best thing people gets sense of realization about significance of environment law and
protection of environment from human, from Stockholm conference. If we are talking about
international development that happened after Stockholm and before Rio, we can see that,
adoption of Law of the Sea Convention (UNCLOS) that happened in 1982. Part 12\13 of
UNCLOS talks about protection of marine environment. In our earth ocean posses 66% percent
of earth surface and the rest is 34%. Most of the country needs to obey UNCLOS rules and by
that most of the earth surface get protection against environment pollution. We can see that Great
Lakes water Quality Agreements (1978), that lake is one of the hubs of biological resources and
that get protected by this law. Moreover, Basel Convention (1989) and Bamako Convention
(1991) that also happened meantime of 20 years and this convention has more significance to
developed international environment law. On the other hand, Article 11,24,29 that describe that
people have right to live in a satisfactory environment, state parties shall promote the protection
and need to work for the improvement of the environment. From global context there has been
milestone development nexus between human rights and environment. Therefore, from
Stockholm to Rio there are many agreement, convention happened that create sense of
realization and states are bound to follow this rules for that massive change we can see in
international law to protect environment.