---
title: "Environmental and Climate Law: Paris and UNFCCC"
description: "International climate law evolved from Stockholm 1972 through the UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol to the 2015 Paris Agreement's nationally determined contribution"
url: "https://modeldiplomat.com/learn/lessons/exam-international-law-environmental-climate-law-paris-unfccc"
---

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Environmental & climate law (Paris, UNFCCC)

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# Environmental & climate law (Paris, UNFCCC)

International environmental and climate law: from Stockholm 1972 through the UNFCCC, Kyoto Protocol and the 2015 Paris Agreement's NDC architecture.

## The architecture of international environmental law

International environmental law crystallised around three founding texts. The **Stockholm Declaration (1972)**, adopted at the UN Conference on the Human Environment, established Principle 21: states have the sovereign right to exploit their resources but a responsibility to ensure activities within their jurisdiction do not cause environmental damage beyond their borders. The **Rio Declaration (1992)**, issued at the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), restated this as Principle 2 and codified the operative principles candidates must retain by name.

## Core principles to memorise

- **Sustainable development** — defined in the Brundtland Report *Our Common Future* (1987) as development meeting present needs without compromising future generations.
- **Common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR)** — Rio Principle 7. Developed states bear greater responsibility given historical emissions and capacity. This is the doctrinal fault line in every climate negotiation.
- **Precautionary principle** — Rio Principle 15: lack of full scientific certainty shall not postpone cost-effective measures against serious or irreversible harm.
- **Polluter pays principle** — Rio Principle 16: the polluter should bear the cost of pollution.
- **Intergenerational equity** — advanced by Edith Brown Weiss; echoed in the Indian Supreme Court's reasoning in *Vellore Citizens Welfare Forum v. Union of India* (1996), which read the precautionary and polluter-pays principles into Articles 21, 48A and 51A(g) of the Constitution.

## The customary and judicial backdrop

The no-harm rule originates in the **Trail Smelter arbitration (1938 and 1941)** between the United States and Canada, the first ruling that a state may be liable for transboundary pollution. The **Corfu Channel case (ICJ, 1949)** affirmed every state's obligation not to knowingly allow its territory to be used for acts contrary to others' rights. The ICJ's **Gabcikovo-Nagymaros (Hungary v. Slovakia, 1997)** judgment endorsed sustainable development as a concept reconciling economic activity with environmental protection. In its **Pulp Mills on the River Uruguay (Argentina v. Uruguay, 2010)** judgment, the Court held that environmental impact assessment is now a requirement under general international law for activities risking significant transboundary harm.

The **UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC, 1992)** is the treaty backbone. It entered into force in 1994, set the ultimate objective in Article 2 — stabilising greenhouse-gas concentrations at a level preventing dangerous anthropogenic interference — and created the **Conference of the Parties (COP)** as its supreme body. Crucially, the UNFCCC contained no binding emission targets; it divided parties into **Annex I** (industrialised states), **Annex II** (Annex I minus economies in transition, owing finance), and **non-Annex I** (developing states). This Annex-based bifurcation, expressing CBDR, would dominate the next three decades of negotiation and is the conceptual key to understanding both Kyoto and Paris.

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