This document provides a historical overview of international environmental law and sustainable development policies from the late 19th century through present day. It discusses major events and agreements including the 1972 Stockholm Declaration, 1987 Brundtland Report, 1992 Rio Earth Summit, 2000 Millennium Development Goals, 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, and the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals adopted in 2015. The document traces the evolution of global cooperation on issues like climate change, biodiversity, and desertification over several decades of international negotiations and agreements.

1. LAW, ENVIRONMENT
AND SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENTPreeti Kana Sikder
Assistant Professor
Department of Law & Justice
Jahangirnagar University

2. Familiarisation with the online environment
Reconnecting with the previous class topics
Easing into the narrative of environmental legal
regime

3. HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND OF
ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS
AND DEVELOPMENT
POLICIES
International Context

4. Use
Oriented
Resource
Oriented
System
Oriented

5. Industrial Revolution, Colonisation and World Wars
(1914-1918) and (1939-1945)

7. From Stockholm to Rio (1972-1992)

8. The Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the
Human Environment, or Stockholm Declaration, was
adopted June 16, 1972 by the United Nations Conference
on the Human Environment at the 21st plenary meeting.
It was the first document in international environmental
law to recognize the right to a healthy environment.
In the declaration, the nations agreed to accept
responsibility for any environmental effects caused by their
actions.

9.  Until 1972, global diplomacy was revolving around war and peace, around the
decolonization of countries in Asia and Africa, mainly, of trying to come to
grips with economic growth and with the battleground of the Cold War era.
 In 1972, the dimension of environmental crisis was added to global
diplomacy when this important conference took note that the way the world
economy was growing, the way we were using our fossil fuel resources, our
water supply, our land and forest assets, our oceans was putting tremendous
stress at a global level on the earth's resources and ecosystems.

11. BRUNDTLAND REPORT
15 years after Stockholm, Prime Minister of the neighbouring
Norway Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, was called upon to convene
for the world a commission to look at this question, especially
in what was anticipated to be a 20th anniversary of the
Stockholm Conference.
The Brundtland Commission, in 1987, brought the concept of
sustainable development to the world, by introducing its most
famous definition, that “Sustainable development is
development that meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their
own needs.”

12. This event became known as the ‘Earth Summit’ to come to grips
with the challenge of sustainable development by facing up to
three huge environmental challenges.
The first treaty was about combating global warming, which was
becoming to be understood as a deep, dire threat to humanity's
future well-being, still looked at as a threat in the future but a
future that was fast being reached by the human emission of
greenhouse gases.

14. The next treaty in Rio was to protect biodiversity as ecologists
were coming to understand that humanity was causing the
extinction of other species, not at a one-by-one rate but
potentially at a disastrous rate of thousands, tens of
thousands, even millions of species being pushed towards
extinction, by their land habitats being destroyed, by
overfishing, by chemical poisons, by climate change itself.
Thus came the Convention on Biological Diversity, aiming to
protect the world's biological diversity by setting common
standards in a common direction.

15. The third multilateral environmental agreement adopted in
Rio was to fight the mass degradation of lands.
Lands that were once productive become unusable,
infertile, deeply degraded, especially in dryland areas
The realisation that deserts encroaching on previous fertile
pasture lands and farmlands became embodied in the UN
Convention to combat desertification.

17.  A non-binding action plan of the United
Nations with regard to sustainable development.
 Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of action to be
taken globally, nationally and locally by
organizations of the United Nations System,
Governments, and Major Groups in every area in
which human impacts on the environment.

19.  Agenda 21
 The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development
 The Statement of Forest Principles
 The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC)
 The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
 United Nations to Convention to Combat Desertification (1994)

22. In 1997, governments met in Kyoto to adopt a
protocol to implement the UNFCCC.
But the Kyoto Protocol met opposition in the most
powerful country, United States of America, which
was also at the time, the main emitter of global
warming greenhouse gases.

23. Copenhagen Protocol (2009)

25. In 2000, with the new millennium arriving then
secretary-general Kofi Annan had the brilliant idea to
put a bold objective in front of the world to cut extreme
poverty, at least by half by the year 2015, compared to
the rate of poverty identified for the year 1990.

27. These were time-bound, quantified objectives for
cutting poverty, getting children in school, cutting
mortality of women and young children, addressing
basic needs like water and sanitation, fighting
epidemic diseases like AIDS, TB, and Malaria and,
doing all of this by 2015.

29. This was a great mission and governments at what
became known as the Millennium Summit, adopted
Kofi Annan's proposal and specifically adopted a set of
objectives in the Millennium Declaration that came to
be known as the Millennium Development Goals.

30. During the period of the Millennium Development Goals
came another anniversary: the 20th anniversary of the Rio
Earth Summit and what is, of course, the 40th anniversary
of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment.
The Rio +20 anniversary was held once again in Rio de
Janeiro in the summer of 2012.

31. Climate change was pushing ahead dramatically, especially
with the rise of China on a coal-based economy, massive
increase of emissions--China became the biggest emitter of
CO2 and of greenhouse gases in the world.
And the rate of emissions rose dramatically rather than
coming down, the global warming was being accelerated, in
fact.

32. The Convention on Biological Diversity in the end
was never ratified by the US Senate, never voted,
and so never adopted and the result is it was
always weak when the richest economy in the
world wasn't behind it and it was not discernibly
slowing the loss of biodiversity as it was aimed to
do.

34. The Convention to Combat Desertification was hardly seen
again.
Even though people were ardently fighting for the principles to
protect the drylands, the amount of resources and attention
that went into the dryland regions was woefully insufficient,
Moreover, these were some of the violent, conflict-ridden
hotspots in the world-- Afghanistan, the Gulf region, the Middle
East, Syria, Iraq, the Sahel of Africa--places of ecological crisis.

36.  The Government of Columbia came up with a very bright idea; proposing
Sustainable Development Goals in conformity with the Millennium
Development Goals, which ultimately became the key outcome of Rio+20
Conference.
 The member states of the UN went to work they negotiated for three years
what would be the content of these new Sustainable Development Goals,
and they timed their introduction to pass the baton from the Millennium
Development Goals to the Sustainable Development Goals, from the MDGs
to the SDG's.

44. Governments had worked for years to hone the list of SDGs
from an initial 300 proposed goals down to the 17 which
covered the three key pillars sustainable development:
prosperity, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability.
Agenda 2030 is the text which includes the 17 Sustainable
Development Goals and lays out their rationale, their
purposes, and in more detail the shared direction forward.

46. After just a few weeks, the same governments arrived in Paris
to attempt finally to put some operational meet on the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was not yet
being implemented.
The Kyoto Protocol had failed in 1997--it was not ratified by
the US--and while other governments adopted it without the
US and then without China, it wasn't making the difference.

49.  It took till 2015, in other words 23 years, from the adoption of the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to come up with the first
operating framework and the Paris Climate Agreement was successfully
brought forward.
 This was a huge triumph--a hundred ninety three governments, 196
signatories (three other signatories--Niue, Cook Islands, and the European
Union also) signed on December 12th, 2015, to adopt a meaningful
framework.
 These two agreements, Agenda 2030 with the 17 Sustainable Development
Goals, and the Paris Climate Agreement, became the hope of our generation.

53. Bangladesh signed the agreement on 22 April 2016
Bangladesh ratified the agreement on 21 September
2016.
The agreement entered into force on 4 November
2016.

54. A means of
authentication and
expresses the
willingness of the
signatory state to
continue the treaty-
making process.
The international
act whereby a
state indicates its
consent to be
bound to a treaty

55. 27
Signed
30
Ratified

56. Age of Sustainable Development by Prof.
Jeffrey Sachs
International Environmental Law:
Bangladesh Perspective, Abdullah al
Farooque