Sustainable development : a role for international environmental law

This study portrays the vital role that sustainable development has in environmental protection. It is argued that, due to an unnecessary polarization of efforts, the success of sustainable development has been rather limited. Thus, after surveying the tension between the ecological, economic development and ethical dimensions of the concept, the author demonstrates the balancing role that international environmental law can have. Two hypotheses, the hypothesis of "concavity" and that of "convexity", are presented to contribute to a more appropriate understanding of the concept. A survey of international environmental agreements and instruments is undertaken in order to present sustainable development as a field in itself.It is further argued that sustainable development has not succeeded in enhancing environmental protection because of the erroneous efforts made to reduce it from a field of international environmental law to a norm of international environmental law. States, communities and individuals should be more concerned with developing new and firm principles in the field of sustainable development. These principles would eventually become the new norms of international and national law and thus, the cornerstone of an era of environmental protection that does not impinge upon the development that humankind is dependent upon