The Global Environment Outlook and Its Implications for International Law Is Law Increasingly Falling Behind?

The growing body of international environmental law has not been successful in addressing the ecological challenges affecting our planet according to the Global Environment Outlook-6. We are not making enough progress to address environmental problems in such a manner that we can achieve the sustainable development goals by 2030 or achieve some degree of sustainable development by 2050. This chapter reviews the latest science on environmental issues and draws five lessons: First, incremental hard law is unable to pre-empt tomorrow’s problems, let alone address yesterday’s challenges. Second, international environmental law needs to make a quantum jump in terms of understanding of the issues and identification of appropriate tools—and this requires the legal community to engage more proactively with scholars from other disciplines. Third, international environmental law must address the drivers of environmental destruction. Fourth, it needs to engage more proactively with the growing pollution caused by the rich and the growing vulnerability of the poor to the impacts. Finally, principles of environmental justice may need to be incorporated in a possible Global Constitution if we are to live peacefully within a world of resource limits.