[i] See, for example: Parenti, C. (2011). Tropic of chaos: Climate change and the new geography of violence. Bold Type Books; Medeiros, E. (2019). The Most Critical Resource: How Climate Change Fuels the Crisis in Syria and the Implications for the World at Large; Welzer, H. (2015). Climate Wars: what people will be killed for in the 21st century. John Wiley & Sons.
[ii] In this regard, it might be useful in terms of facilitating its passage that, at the diplomatic drafting meetings for the Global Pact for the Environment now scheduled for the spring of 2022, a more versatile draft of the Pact be presented that contains possible new phrasing and powers. It would invite greater participation and ownership by state diplomatic delegations that will then become co-authors, advocates and defenders of the final text. Currently, the draft seems like a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” proposition, which is certainly not the intent of the original drafters.
[iii] See: Dupuy, P. M., & Viñuales, J. E. (2018). International environmental law. Cambridge University Press.
[iv] See my paper, Promoting the Rule of Law in the Global Environment: A Legal Precis for the March Nairobi Conference, the second Substantive Session on GPE, UNEP, Nairobi 2019. Also see: https://definitions.uslegal.com/j/jus-publicum/
[v] To paraphrase Hale, “Necessity is the first law of time and nature—1 Hale P.C. 54. See: Sir Matthew Hale (1800), The History of the Pleas of the Crown: In Two Volumes (Vol. 2). Payne. “Necessity” is, of course, a two edged sword to argue in law. So, the argument here for the international legal recognition of the a priori necessity of the global ecology to sustaining and perpetuating life on Earth as a biological fact is not the same legal argument concerning the legal “necessity,” say, to obey or justify absolute monarchy, which is among the first time it seems to appear in the Anglo-American legal tradition; for An in depth discussion of this latter issue see the excellent volume by Glenn Burgess (1997) Absolute Monarchy and the Stuart Constitution, Yale University Press, New Haven and London; see also the book review entitled: Davis, J. C. (1997). “GLEN BURGESS, Absolute Monarchy and the Stuart Constitution” (Book Review). Parliamentary History, 16(2), 234.
[vi] Thomas Hobbes, See: The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury; Now First Collected and Edited by Sir William Molesworth, Bart., (London: Bohn, 1839–45). 11 volumes. Reprint London, 1939-–; reprint: Aalen, 1966 at: Hobbes, T. (1839). The collected works of Thomas Hobbes. See, in particular, Leviathan, Chapter XIV and II. De Corpore Politico, or the Elements of Law. Hobbes is referring, of course, to natural law; since this terms carries multiple meanings, we will be referring to it as the Law of Nature, and using the two terms interchangeably, to signify the a priori necessity of legally recognizing the rights of nature to self-preservation as a necessary precondition to recognizing the rights of human beings to a healthy environment—as argued here, both are necessary to our self-preservation.
[vii] The origins of the public trust can be traced back to Roman law, and to a famous maxim in the Corpus Iuris Civilis of Emperor Justinian I. (533 AD), based in turn on the earlier writings of a learned jurist, Aelius Marcianus (c. 220 AD): “So surely by the law of nature, the atmosphere, watercourses, the sea and hence the seashores, are common to all. See: English translations by T.C. Sanders, The Institutes of Justinian (London: Longmans Green, 4th edn. 1903), p. 90; and C.H. Monro, The Digest of Justinian vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1904), at 39-40. Quoted in: Sand, P. H. (2014). The rise of public trusteeship in international environmental law. Envtl. Pol’y & L., 44, 210. Finally, see: Boudreau, T. E. (2012). The Modern Law of Nations: Jus Gentium and the Role of Roman Jurisprudence in Shaping the Post World War II International Legal Order. Dig.: Nat’l Italian Am. B. Ass’n LJ, 20, 1.
[viii] Ibid., Andrei. Also see: The Trail Smelter Case (United States v. Canada) (1938 and 1941) 3 R.I.A.A. 1905.
[ix] See: Boudreau, T. (2016). Paradigms Lost and Found: The Emergent International Legal Order. J. Juris, 30, 65.
[x] See: Magalhães, P., Steffen, W., & Bosselmann, K. (Eds.). (2016). The safe operating space treaty: A new approach to managing our use of the earth system. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.