The Principles Of International Environmental Law And The Legal Status

International environmental law is a branch of the traditional international law;therefore, its basic principles shall conform to the connotations and characteristics ofinternational law’s basic principles. Namely it shall conform to the characteristics ofinternational recognition, applying to all fields and validly constituting theinternational law’s foundation. However, law basis of the proposition “basicprinciples of international environmental law” is not stable due to its shortoccurrence time and rapid development. It will become stable after being confirmedby authoritative legal document, recognized by international court of justice’s case,confirmed and consistently practiced by the national law, and reaching a consensusafter long-time implementation. However, the authoritative legal document itself, forexample, the Stockholm Declaration lists26principles and the Rio Declaration lists27principles. The representative global treaty of the international environmental lawregulates the basic principles differently. Many rules, standards and concepts in theinternational environmental documents are labeled as the “basic principles”. Theverdict amount directly related to the basic principles of international environmentlaw is quite limited in the aspect of the international court of justice and arbitraltribunal’s arbitration and advisory opinion. Moreover, the verdict attitude to theseprinciples is generally vague and unclear. With differences in politics, economics andstandpoint, the developing countries and developed countries are quite difficult inreaching a consensus on practices in environmental domain and law. It’s hard toconfirm the basic principles in consideration of these factors. Therefore, manyscholars summarize the agreed “basic principles” of international environmental lawaccording to their respective perspectives, causing unfailing discussions and disputesin educational circles.The perspective and clue in this paper doesn’t focus on the extended discussionof the international environmental law’s basic principles. However, this paperemphasizes the discussion of what the legal status of the rules, standards or concepts labeled as “basic principles of international environmental law” are. The word“principle” is widely used in international environmental documents, which doesn’tmean that these so-called “principles” really conform to the standards ofinternational law’s general principles. Each sticks to his own argument and comes toa deadlock for the different judgment standards and standpoints on principles&standards. If we establish what legal status of the these rules, standards or conceptsare and what legal effect it has, and thus employ them in the internationalenvironmental practices from the perspective of sources of international law, theseprinciples will play their role more easily.This paper summarizes, classifies and analyzes the important “basic principles”in the existing international environmental documents on several aspects includingthe “soft law” principles, rules of customary international law, general principles ofinternational environmental law, rules&principles of the forming customary law,and etc. through the quotation and summarization of the international environmentaldocuments, judgment made by the international court of justice&arbitration andnational practices. This paper emphasizes and attaches importance to the influenceson the international environmental practices caused by the rules of the “developing”customary law or “newly-developing principles” and “soft law” documents, ratherthan discussing how many existing standards, concepts and rules have been able tobe recognized as the customary international law or general principles ofinternational law for environmental protection, because they play different andimportant roles in promoting the continuous development of internationalenvironmental law in these circumstances.Although the recognized rules with general binding force summarized from theexisting international environmental documents is quite limited, and majority of therules only can restrain the contracting party’s treaty rules and “soft law” rules, orapply to the general rules of certain specific environmental area not in the wholefield of international environmental law, it doesn’t mean that there is no law toprotect the rights in the field of international environment law. It’s of greatsignificance to study the legal status of basic principles of the new branch of theinternational law with both the traditional characteristics of international law and environmental area’s particularity in understanding&interpreting the internationalenvironmental law or facilitating the practices of international environmental lawand promoting the development of international environmental law.