Abstract
The Global Pact for the Environment is a legal initiative that seeks to promote significant change to international environmental law and governance. Initial efforts to gain state acceptance through United Nations processes have faltered. This chapter considers what can be learnt from the emergence and acceptance of the doctrine of ‘responsibility to protect’, that could inform future efforts to pursue either the Global Pact or other more transformative legal initiatives. The main finding is that the history of ‘responsibility to protect’ has much offer civil society in the search for transformative approaches to state sovereignty in an age of collapsing ecological integrity.
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Notes
- 1.
This is my interpretation of Fabius’ phrase ‘‘significant concerns about future decisions”.
- 2.
The additional involvement of the French President and government is considered further below.
- 3.
Voigt states that the report attempted to avoid this narrow framing by adopting a wide interpretation of its mandate. Some states suggested that report recommendations went beyond the UNGA mandate (Voigt 2019, p. 17).
- 4.
Members were from: USA, Russia, Germany, Philippines, South Africa, Canada, Switzerland, India and Guatemala.
- 5.
All websites accessed on 24-11-2019.
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Taylor, P. (2020). Opportunity Within Failure: Can the Global Pact for the Environment Learn from Responsibility to Protect?. In: Westra, L., Bosselmann, K., Fermeglia, M. (eds) Ecological Integrity in Science and Law. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46259-8_19
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