The Global Pact for the Environment- a Necessity and One of the Answers to the Worldwide Environmental Crisis-Where to?

• Author: Elena Loredana Pîrvu
• Position: Associate Professor, PhD, Police Academy Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Romania
• Pages: 221-231

ISSN: 2067 – 9211 Green Economy and Sustainable Development

221

The Global Pact for the Environment- a Necessity and One of the

Answers to the Worldwide Environmental Crisis-Where to?

Elena Loredana Pîrvu1

Abstract: At the UN Summit in New York on 19 September 2017, the French President announced all

the representatives of the world States that he wanted to establish, under the aegis of the UN, what would

be not just a design project, but a global pact for th e environment, therefore a new instrument of

international environmental law, whose goal would be supplementing the international environmental

law, enhancing the coherence thereof and enabling th e implementation of the obligations set forth in such

law, which may tak e the form of an international treaty adopted by the General Assembly. The initiative

belongs to the Club des juristes and aims to collect in a single text the great international principles of

environmental law and make them binding, due to th e possibility of enforcing them in courts of law. This

text could become the backbone of international environmental law.

Keywords: rights; Global Pact; Environment; international treaty

1. Introduction

At the UN Summit in New York on 19 September 2017, the French President announced all the

representatives of the world States that he wanted to establish, under the aegis of the UN, what would

be not just a design project, but a global pact for the environment, therefore a new instrument of

international environmental law, whose goal would be supplementing the international environmental

law, enhancing the coherence thereof and enabling the implementation of the obligations set forth in

such law, which may take the form of an international treaty adopted by the General Assembly.

The initiative belongs to the Club des juristes and aims to collect in a single text the great international

principles of environmental law and make them binding, due to the possibility of enforcing them in

courts of law, a conclusion that the Club des juristes2 reached in June 2017.

The idea of a Global Pact for the Environment, however, is not new3. For over thirty years, the

international lawyer community has asked States to adopt a text that would codify general

environmental principles.

As early as 1987, the Brundtland Report mentioned a list of “Legal Principles for Environmental

Protection and Sustainable Development”. In turn, the International Union for Conservation of Nature

(IUCN) proposed in 1995 a draft International Covenant on Environment and Development. In 2015,

the adoption of such an international treaty was also one of the proposals of the Environment

1 Associate Professor, PhD, Police Academy Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Romania, Address: Aleea Privighetorilor no. 1-3,

Bucharest, Romania, Corresponding author: loredana.pirvu@yahoo.com.

2Created in 2007, it is an independent forum for debates and legal proposals. It collects case law from various environments.

Magistrates, lawyers and notaries, professors and company representatives make a prospective reflection on the most

important legal matters.

3Luke Lavrysen, Towards a Global Compact for the Environment? , March 22-23, 2018, Colloque « À quoi sert le droit de

l’environnement ? », CEDRE, U Saint-Louis, 22 – 23 mars 2018 Vers un PacteMondial pour l’Environnement ?