Environment versus Development

The International Law Regime, as far as it is founded on exploitative colonial policies, is, as argued in the thesis, such that it enables and justifies an economic system that allows one to outsource and relocate polluting industries to the poor and indebted Southern states. Whilst this has been a successful formula for the Global North in reducing its emissions, by simultaneously allowing them to maintain a particular standard of living, global emissions have seen a massive spike. However, despite the fact there is a recognition and discouragement of such a relocation in Principle 14 of the Rio Declaration, vested interests, growing interdependency, and the need to continuously create revenue to service debts, the possibility of a State suing another for misusing its resources, or funding polluting activities will almost never been seen. Moreover, such policies have enabled states to circumvent domestic and international environmental obligations. Despite there being continuous emphasis on international cooperation to combat the problem of climate change, the protection of the same is viewed very much as a domestic problem and which has left the International Environmental Law regime a weak guardian in the fight against a very palpable global problem. Therefore, the next best option is to allow for individuals to hold states accountable so as to bring the problem out of the confines of jurisdiction and statehood. Moreover, to circumvent the need to create a new regime or new laws, soft or hard, one can make use of principles already existing, i.e. No-Harm, and finding tools already existing in other international legal regimes, such as International Human Rights. It shall be shown that by presenting the environmental problem as a human rights problem rather than one protecting economic growth and development, has been a much more effective way of protecting the environment, not only in the domestic context, as one shall see by looking at Pakistan, the author’s home state, but also internationally