International Environmental Law Notes
Introduction
International environmental law notes are most useful when they connect treaties, principles, and cases to their actual legal status. International environmental law forms part of public international law and governs questions such as transboundary environmental harm, shared natural resources, marine pollution, biodiversity loss, climate change, and other environmental problems requiring international cooperation. For study and revision, the central task is not simply remembering authorities. It is identifying the legal source behind each proposition and distinguishing binding treaty obligations and customary rules from soft-law instruments, institutional decisions, and contested legal claims.
The field is divided among numerous specialized regimes rather than organized in a single international environmental code. Climate change, ozone depletion, marine protection, biodiversity, transboundary watercourses, and hazardous substances are regulated through different combinations of treaties and general international law. Framework conventions may develop through protocols, amendments, annexes, and decisions of treaty bodies, while participation can differ at each level. Precise analysis therefore requires identifying the particular instrument and determining whether it binds the State concerned.
Environmental principles also differ substantially in legal status and function. The customary duty to prevent significant environmental harm operates through due diligence, while the International Court of Justice has recognized environmental impact assessment as a requirement under general international law where a proposed activity presents a risk of significant adverse transboundary impact (ICJ, 2010). Precaution, sustainable development, common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, and polluter pays cannot simply be treated as equivalent customary rules. Their legal relevance depends on treaty text, customary law, interpretation, institutional practice, and the particular circumstances in which they are invoked. The ICJ's 2025 climate advisory opinion further clarified the relationship between climate treaties, customary environmental obligations, and other applicable rules of international law (ICJ, 2025).
Cases are most valuable when they are learned through the propositions they actually establish and the limits of those propositions. Trail Smelter, Gabčíkovo-Nagymaros, Pulp Mills, later environmental judgments, and the recent climate advisory opinions each illuminate particular obligations, procedures, or legal consequences; none provides a complete environmental legal framework on its own. A reliable approach is to identify the applicable source, determine its legal status and scope, connect it to the relevant treaty regime and jurisprudence, and only then apply the rule to the facts.
1. What International Environmental Law Regulates
International environmental law does not regulate a single, universally defined object called “the environment.” Individual treaties protect particular resources, ecosystems, species, spaces, or environmental interests, and their scope depends on the instrument concerned. A marine-pollution treaty, a biodiversity convention, and a climate agreement may all pursue environmental protection while creating different obligations for different parties. The practical starting point is therefore the environmental problem and the legal rules capable of governing it.
The scale of the problem helps identify the relevant legal framework. Local environmental harm is usually governed primarily by domestic law, although international human-rights or treaty obligations may still apply. Transboundary problems, such as pollution crossing a frontier or activities affecting a shared river, bring prevention, due diligence, environmental assessment, notification, consultation, and dispute settlement into sharper focus. Regional problems commonly require cooperation among several States, while global problems such as climate change, ozone depletion, and biodiversity loss depend heavily on multilateral regimes.
This distinction is particularly useful in legal problem questions. A transboundary pollution dispute may turn on whether a State failed to regulate an activity under its jurisdiction that created a significant risk to another State. Climate change presents a different structure because emissions are cumulative, sources are dispersed, and the harm is global. The applicable law may therefore combine a specialized treaty regime with customary environmental obligations and, depending on the parties and circumstances, rules of the law of the sea or human-rights law.
International environmental law remains part of the wider system of public international law rather than a self-contained legal order. Environmental treaties are governed by the ordinary law of treaties; customary rules must be established according to the general requirements of customary international law; jurisdiction before an international court or tribunal requires an independent legal basis; and breaches may engage the general law of State responsibility. Climate law is an important specialist field within this broader subject, but it is not synonymous with international environmental law.
2. Sources and Legal Status in Environmental Law
The sources of international environmental law are rooted in the general sources of public international law. Article 38(1) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice remains the conventional starting point: treaties, customary international law, and general principles of law form the principal categories, while judicial decisions and scholarly writings serve as subsidiary means for determining rules of law. Environmental law does not operate through a separate hierarchy of sources simply because its subject matter is specialized.
Treaties carry much of the field’s regulatory weight because environmental problems often require detailed technical rules, institutions, monitoring systems, financial mechanisms, and procedures capable of adjustment over time. Many regimes use a framework structure. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity establish broad obligations and institutions that are supplemented by later instruments and decisions. The Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer was followed by the Montreal Protocol, which developed further through amendments, adjustments, annexes, and institutional practice.
Those legal layers must be kept separate. A State may be party to a framework convention without being bound by every later protocol or amendment. Amendments operate according to the acceptance and entry-into-force rules of the relevant treaty, while some regimes create distinct procedures for modifying technical obligations. Under the Montreal Protocol, for example, adjustments to controls on substances already regulated operate through a special treaty procedure and are legally different from formal amendments.
Customary international law becomes especially important where treaties do not apply, leave gaps, or operate alongside general rules. The preventive obligation implemented through due diligence has a well-established customary core, while environmental impact assessment is also recognized under general international law in defined circumstances. Other frequently cited environmental concepts do not have the same status. Precaution and polluter pays have significant treaty, institutional, and policy influence, but their status as uniform rules of general customary international law remains contested.
Soft-law instruments must be classified just as carefully. The Stockholm Declaration of 1972 and the Rio Declaration of 1992 are not treaties and do not bind States merely because their principles are influential. Particular provisions may reflect existing customary law or contribute evidence relevant to the formation or identification of custom, but customary status still depends on the necessary evidence of State practice and opinio juris. Decisions of Conferences or Meetings of the Parties likewise derive their legal effect from the constitutive treaty, the powers conferred on the institution, and the terms of the particular decision. The central study questions remain: what is the source, what legal effect does it have, who is bound, and under what conditions?
3. Core Environmental Principles and Obligations
The relationship between sovereignty and prevention lies at the center of general international environmental law. Permanent sovereignty over natural resources is exercised within the limits of international law, while States are required to exercise due diligence to prevent significant environmental harm where the applicable treaty or customary rule so requires. The no-harm rule is therefore not a system of automatic liability for every adverse environmental consequence. It is principally an obligation of conduct assessed through the adequacy of State behavior.
Due diligence gives the preventive obligation practical content. Depending on the activity and level of risk, a State may need appropriate legislation, licensing procedures, regulatory supervision, environmental assessment, monitoring, enforcement against private operators, and revision of existing measures as scientific knowledge develops. Environmental harm and legal breach must remain distinct: damage may occur without a breach if the State exercised the required diligence, while inadequate regulation may violate an obligation even before the anticipated harm occurs.
Environmental impact assessment is one of the principal procedural techniques supporting prevention. In Pulp Mills on the River Uruguay, the International Court of Justice held that where there is a risk that a proposed industrial activity may have a significant adverse impact in a transboundary context, an environmental impact assessment is required under general international law (ICJ, 2010). The Court did not prescribe a single universal EIA format; the content of the assessment depends on the circumstances, the nature of the activity, and applicable domestic or treaty rules.
Environmental assessment must also be distinguished from notification and consultation. Where the relevant conditions are satisfied, States may be required to notify potentially affected States and consult in good faith over preventive or mitigating measures. Consultation ordinarily creates a procedural obligation rather than a veto. The existence of disagreement does not by itself give the affected State a legal right to prohibit the proposed activity.
Precaution addresses a different problem: how decision-makers respond to potentially serious environmental harm where scientific certainty is incomplete. Rio Principle 15 contains the best-known formulation, but treaty regimes express precaution in different ways and attach different consequences to it. International courts and tribunals have treated precaution as relevant to environmental decision-making and due diligence, yet its independent and uniform status as a general customary rule remains contested.
Sustainable development, intergenerational equity, common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, polluter pays, and participation rights likewise perform different legal functions. Sustainable development operates principally through integration and interpretation. CBDR-RC has concrete treaty significance in climate law, where it structures differentiation among States. Polluter pays influences regulatory and liability design but does not automatically establish a general rule of inter-State compensation. Participation rights obtain binding content through particular instruments, including the Aarhus and Escazú Agreements for their parties. These concepts are best studied by source and legal function rather than as a single list of supposedly equivalent principles.
4. Major International Environmental Treaties and Regimes
The major international environmental law treaties are easier to understand by regulatory family than as a chronological catalogue. Atmospheric protection provides one clear example. The 1985 Vienna Convention created the framework for cooperation on protection of the ozone layer, while the 1987 Montreal Protocol established controls on ozone-depleting substances. The Protocol subsequently developed through amendments, adjustments, financial assistance, reporting, and non-compliance procedures. The 2016 Kigali Amendment added controls on hydrofluorocarbons, which do not deplete ozone but have significant global-warming potential.
Climate change uses a different architecture. The 1992 UNFCCC establishes the general framework, differentiated commitments, institutions, reporting arrangements, and financial cooperation. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol imposed quantified emission-limitation and reduction commitments on Annex I Parties listed in Annex B during its commitment periods. Kyoto remains in force, although those quantified commitment periods have concluded. The 2015 Paris Agreement now supplies the central universal NDC architecture for post-2020 climate mitigation.
Under Article 4 of the Paris Agreement, each party must prepare, communicate, and maintain successive nationally determined contributions and communicate an NDC every five years. NDC content is nationally determined, but the Agreement also requires progression and the reflection of each party’s highest possible ambition. Parties must pursue domestic mitigation measures with the aim of achieving their contributions. The regime combines these obligations with transparency, periodic global stocktakes, adaptation, finance, and a facilitative compliance mechanism (Paris Agreement, 2015).
Marine environmental law is anchored in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Part XII establishes obligations concerning protection and preservation of the marine environment, pollution control, cooperation, monitoring, and environmental assessment in specified circumstances. Those general provisions operate alongside specialized instruments governing shipping, dumping, fisheries, and regional seas.
The BBNJ Agreement adds a treaty framework for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. Adopted in 2023 and in force since 17 January 2026, it addresses marine genetic resources and benefit-sharing, area-based management tools, environmental impact assessment, and capacity-building and transfer of marine technology (BBNJ Agreement, 2023). The Agreement binds its own parties and supplements rather than replaces the wider law applicable to the high seas, the Area, fisheries, shipping, and other activities beyond national jurisdiction.
International watercourse law deals with another form of shared environmental resource. Its central framework combines equitable and reasonable utilization with the duty to take appropriate measures to prevent significant harm. Cooperation, notification, consultation, and environmental assessment help manage competing upstream and downstream interests. The 1997 UN Watercourses Convention provides a detailed treaty regime for its parties, while several of the field’s central principles also have a customary basis. Treaty-specific procedures should not automatically be presented as universal customary law.
Biodiversity law is distributed across several instruments with different regulatory techniques. The Convention on Biological Diversity addresses conservation, sustainable use, and benefit-sharing. Its Cartagena Protocol regulates specified transboundary movements of living modified organisms, while the Nagoya Protocol develops access and benefit-sharing rules concerning genetic resources. CITES regulates international trade in specimens of listed species of wild fauna and flora through appendix and permit systems; Ramsar focuses on wetlands; and the Convention on Migratory Species combines treaty obligations with subsidiary agreements and other cooperative arrangements.
Chemicals and hazardous waste use still different legal techniques. The Basel Convention controls transboundary movements of hazardous and other covered wastes; the Rotterdam Convention establishes prior informed consent procedures for listed hazardous chemicals and pesticides in international trade; the Stockholm Convention regulates persistent organic pollutants; and the Minamata Convention addresses mercury. For revision, the useful distinction is not simply which treaties exist, but which environmental problem activates each regime, which States are bound, and what legal technique the treaty uses to regulate the activity.
5. Leading International Environmental Law Cases
International environmental law cases are most useful when linked to a precise legal proposition and its limits. Trail Smelter remains an important historical authority because the arbitration addressed serious, proven air pollution originating in Canada and causing damage in the United States. Its reach should not be exaggerated. The dispute arose under an agreed bilateral arbitral framework and does not establish strict State liability for every instance of transboundary pollution (Trail Smelter, 1941).
In Gabčíkovo-Nagymaros Project, the International Court of Justice considered environmental protection within the ordinary law of treaties and State responsibility. Hungary could not justify abandoning its treaty obligations on the facts through ecological necessity, while Czechoslovakia was not entitled to put the unilateral diversion known as Variant C into operation. The Court also emphasized the need to reconcile economic development with environmental protection and required the parties to implement their continuing treaty relationship in light of contemporary environmental standards (ICJ, 1997). The judgment does not establish a general environmental exception permitting States to disregard treaties.
Pulp Mills on the River Uruguay is especially useful for distinguishing procedural and substantive obligations. Uruguay breached procedural duties under the 1975 Statute of the River Uruguay by authorizing the mills without completing the required cooperative process, but Argentina did not establish a breach of the substantive environmental obligations at issue. The Court also articulated the due-diligence standard and recognized environmental impact assessment as required under general international law where a proposed activity presents the relevant risk of significant adverse transboundary impact (ICJ, 2010).
The joined 2015 cases developed that distinction further. In Construction of a Road in Costa Rica along the San Juan River, Costa Rica breached its customary obligation to conduct an environmental impact assessment before undertaking works that created the relevant transboundary risk. In Certain Activities Carried Out by Nicaragua in the Border Area, the Court did not find Nicaragua responsible for the environmental procedural and substantive violations alleged in relation to its dredging activities (ICJ, 2015).
The 2018 compensation judgment in Certain Activities addressed a different issue: reparation for environmental damage. The Court accepted that impairment or loss of environmental goods and services can be compensable and awarded Costa Rica compensation for environmental damage caused by Nicaragua’s unlawful conduct (ICJ, 2018). The judgment is important for environmental valuation, but it did not create a universal compensation formula for every form of ecological loss.
Whaling in the Antarctic illustrates judicial scrutiny of a claimed treaty exception. Japan relied on Article VIII of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling to characterize its JARPA II program as scientific research. The ICJ examined whether the program’s design and implementation were reasonable in relation to its stated objectives and concluded that the permits had not been issued “for purposes of scientific research” within Article VIII (ICJ, 2014). The judgment did not prohibit whaling generally or eliminate the treaty exception.
Recent climate advisory opinions add important authority without creating one uniform climate-law test. In 2024, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea held that anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions constitute pollution of the marine environment within Article 1(1)(4) of UNCLOS and interpreted the resulting obligations of UNCLOS States Parties, including a stringent due-diligence standard (ITLOS, 2024).
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights addressed climate change through the American Convention and related inter-American human-rights law in Advisory Opinion AO-32/25 (IACtHR, 2025). The ICJ’s advisory opinion of 23 July 2025 considered climate treaties, customary environmental obligations, other applicable rules of international law, and the legal consequences of breach under the general law of State responsibility (ICJ, 2025).
These opinions must be kept legally distinct. Their jurisdictional bases, applicable law, territorial and personal reach, and reasoning differ. Advisory opinions are authoritative judicial statements of law, but they are not contentious judgments binding opposing parties in the same manner as a judgment resolving a dispute. For revision, the most reliable method is to remember each authority through three elements: the case, the legal proposition it supports, and the limit on that proposition.
6. Compliance, Disputes, and State Responsibility
International environmental obligations are often implemented through institutional processes before any dispute reaches a court. Multilateral environmental agreements commonly rely on national implementation, reporting, inventories, scientific monitoring, expert review, financial assistance, capacity-building, and treaty-specific non-compliance procedures. Many of these mechanisms are designed primarily to identify implementation problems and restore compliance rather than punish a party.
Treaty compliance machinery is different from judicial dispute settlement. A non-compliance body may examine reporting failures, recommend assistance, encourage an implementation plan, or apply consequences authorized by its treaty without determining international responsibility in the same manner as a court. A judicial body may separately decide that a State has breached an international obligation even where no treaty compliance committee has previously reached that conclusion.
Environmental disputes may be addressed through negotiation, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial proceedings, treaty procedures, regional human-rights mechanisms, or domestic courts. Each forum has its own jurisdictional basis, applicable law, standing or capacity requirements, evidentiary rules, and remedies. In contentious proceedings before the ICJ, jurisdiction requires a recognized basis of State consent. Advisory proceedings arise under a different jurisdictional framework and do not resolve a contentious dispute between opposing States.
The existence of a substantive environmental obligation therefore does not establish jurisdiction before a particular tribunal. Jurisdiction, admissibility, applicable law, breach, attribution, causation, and remedy should be analyzed separately. A strong argument that an environmental rule has been violated may still fail procedurally if the chosen forum lacks competence to hear the claim.
State responsibility begins with the primary obligation that allegedly has been breached. The International Law Commission’s Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts provide the standard analytical framework: internationally wrongful conduct requires an act or omission attributable to the State that constitutes a breach of an international obligation (ILC, 2001, art. 2). The Articles are not a treaty and are not binding as a single instrument, although many of their provisions reflect customary international law.
Environmental harm and an internationally wrongful act are not synonymous. Damage may occur even when a State has exercised the due diligence required by the applicable rule. Conversely, a State may breach a procedural or regulatory obligation without proof that environmental damage ultimately occurred. Where private operators cause the immediate harm, their conduct is not automatically attributable to the State; the relevant breach may instead consist of the State’s own failure to regulate, license, assess, supervise, monitor, or enforce as required.
Once responsibility is established, the legal consequences may include continued performance of the underlying obligation, cessation of continuing wrongful conduct, appropriate assurances or guarantees of non-repetition where required, and full reparation for injury caused by the breach. Reparation may take the form of restitution, compensation, satisfaction, or a combination of those forms (ILC, 2001, arts. 29–31, 34–37). The 2018 Certain Activities judgment demonstrates that environmental damage itself may be compensable under international law.
State responsibility must also be distinguished from specialized civil-liability regimes. Particular treaties may channel liability toward operators and may impose strict or otherwise specially defined liability within their own scope. Those arrangements do not create a general rule that States are strictly liable whenever hazardous activities cause environmental damage.
Climate change tests the ordinary responsibility framework because emissions are cumulative and originate from numerous States and private actors over long periods. The ICJ’s 2025 advisory opinion confirmed that breaches of applicable climate obligations can engage the general law of State responsibility. It did not allocate predetermined shares of responsibility or compensation among States, and questions of causation, invocation, apportionment, and reparation remain dependent on the applicable obligation, evidence, and circumstances of the particular claim (ICJ, 2025).
7. Using These Notes in Exams and Research
International environmental law revision notes become more useful when they provide a method for applying the law rather than a catalogue of authorities. Start by identifying the environmental problem, its geographic scale, the relevant States and other actors, and the conduct requiring legal assessment. Then identify potentially applicable treaties and confirm whether they were in force at the relevant time and binding on the States concerned.
Treaty participation needs to be checked at the correct legal layer. A State may be party to a framework convention while remaining outside a protocol or later amendment. The same caution applies to institutional decisions: a COP, CMA, or MOP decision should not be treated as equivalent to treaty text without examining the legal authority under which it was adopted and the effect attributed to it by the governing instrument.
Customary international law should be examined separately. Identify the proposed rule, determine whether its customary status is established, and note any threshold that activates it, such as a risk of significant transboundary harm. Soft-law principles should remain in that category unless there is an independent legal basis for treating the proposition as binding.
The next stage is application. Determine what the obligation actually requires and whether it is an obligation of conduct, an obligation of result, or a treaty-specific formulation that does not fit neatly into either label. Apply the facts to the legal requirements before turning to jurisdiction, attribution, causation, responsibility, and remedy. This sequence prevents an environmental problem answer from beginning with compensation or enforcement before establishing the underlying rule and breach.
Research benefits from the same source discipline. Treaty texts and official depositary records are the proper starting point for participation, reservations, amendments, and entry into force. Judgments and advisory opinions should be read for the legal conclusion actually adopted rather than through summaries alone. Institutional decisions require attention to their legal basis, wording, and procedural status, especially in rapidly developing areas such as climate change, marine biodiversity, chemicals, and plastic pollution.
Revision can then be organized around a small set of legally meaningful questions. For a treaty: what does it regulate, who is bound, what obligations does it create, and how is compliance organized? For a principle: what is its source, status, and function? For a case: what did the court or tribunal decide, what proposition does the decision support, and what issue did it leave unresolved? This produces more reliable international environmental law exam notes than memorizing isolated treaty names or case summaries.
Students preparing the subject as a complete module may benefit from the more systematic structure of the International Environmental Law Study Guide, particularly where several treaty regimes, cases, and legal-status distinctions must be revised together.
Recommended Study Guide
The International Environmental Law Study Guide is most relevant to students studying international environmental law as a full subject, preparing for examinations, or researching problems that cross several environmental regimes. Its main practical function is organization: the field requires repeated movement among treaties, customary rules, cases, institutional decisions, and the general rules of public international law.
The guide provides more detailed treatment of sources and legal status, principles and obligations, the principal environmental regimes, implementation and compliance, dispute settlement, State responsibility and reparation, and intersections with human rights, trade, investment, and armed conflict. Its analytical and revision materials include worked examples, recurring mistakes, comparison tables, checklists, a glossary, consolidated case and treaty material, revision questions, and problem questions.
It will not be necessary for every reader. Someone seeking clarification of one principle or a starting point for a narrow research issue may be adequately served by concise notes and the relevant primary authorities. The guide is better suited to sustained study across the field, examination preparation, and situations in which several regimes and authorities need to be compared within one structured framework.
Also read
Conclusion
International environmental law is easier to analyze when legal classification comes before application. A rule should first be traced to its source, legal status, scope, and addressees. Only then can its conditions be applied to the facts.
Treaties and cases require the same discipline. Specialized regimes govern different environmental problems, while decisions such as Trail Smelter, Gabčíkovo-Nagymaros, Pulp Mills, and the recent climate advisory opinions are useful for the propositions they actually establish rather than as general symbols of environmental protection.
A reliable international environmental law answer follows a disciplined sequence: identify the applicable source, determine its legal effect, apply the relevant obligation, and then address breach and its consequences. Jurisdiction, attribution, causation, responsibility, and reparation remain separate questions even when they arise from the same environmental dispute.
References
Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ Agreement) (2023) adopted 19 June 2023, entered into force 17 January 2026, UN Registration No. 59087.
Amendment to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (Kigali Amendment) (2016) adopted 15 October 2016, entered into force 1 January 2019.
Arbitral Tribunal (1938/1941) Trail Smelter (United States v Canada), Awards of 16 April 1938 and 11 March 1941, Reports of International Arbitral Awards, vol. III, pp. 1905–1982.
Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal (1989) adopted 22 March 1989, entered into force 5 May 1992, 1673 UNTS 57.
Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity (2000) adopted 29 January 2000, entered into force 11 September 2003, 2226 UNTS 208.
Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (Aarhus Convention) (1998) adopted 25 June 1998, entered into force 30 October 2001, 2161 UNTS 447.
Convention on Biological Diversity (1992) agreed and adopted at Nairobi on 22 May 1992, opened for signature at Rio de Janeiro on 5 June 1992, entered into force 29 December 1993, 1760 UNTS 79.
Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) (1979) adopted 23 June 1979, entered into force 1 November 1983, 1651 UNTS 333.
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) (1973) adopted 3 March 1973, entered into force 1 July 1975, 993 UNTS 243.
Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses (1997) adopted 21 May 1997, entered into force 17 August 2014, 2999 UNTS 77.
Convention on Wetlands of International Importance especially as Waterfowl Habitat (Ramsar Convention) (1971) adopted 2 February 1971, entered into force 21 December 1975, 996 UNTS 245.
Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm Declaration) (1972) adopted 16 June 1972, in Report of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, Stockholm, 5–16 June 1972, UN Doc. A/CONF.48/14/Rev.1, Chapter I.
Inter-American Court of Human Rights (2025) Climate Emergency and Human Rights, Advisory Opinion OC-32/25, 29 May 2025.
International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (1946) adopted 2 December 1946, entered into force 10 November 1948, 161 UNTS 72.
International Court of Justice (1997) Gabčíkovo-Nagymaros Project (Hungary/Slovakia), Judgment, 25 September 1997, ICJ Reports 1997, p. 7.
International Court of Justice (2010) Pulp Mills on the River Uruguay (Argentina v Uruguay), Judgment, 20 April 2010, ICJ Reports 2010, p. 14.
International Court of Justice (2014) Whaling in the Antarctic (Australia v Japan: New Zealand intervening), Judgment, 31 March 2014, ICJ Reports 2014, p. 226.
International Court of Justice (2015) Certain Activities Carried Out by Nicaragua in the Border Area (Costa Rica v Nicaragua) and Construction of a Road in Costa Rica along the San Juan River (Nicaragua v Costa Rica), Judgment, 16 December 2015, ICJ Reports 2015, p. 665.
International Court of Justice (2018) Certain Activities Carried Out by Nicaragua in the Border Area (Costa Rica v Nicaragua), Compensation, Judgment, 2 February 2018, ICJ Reports 2018 (I), p. 15.
International Court of Justice (2025) Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change, Advisory Opinion, 23 July 2025, General List No. 187.
International Law Commission (2001) ‘Draft articles on responsibility of States for internationally wrongful acts, with commentaries’, in Yearbook of the International Law Commission 2001, vol. II, Part Two, UN Doc. A/56/10.
International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (2024) Request for an Advisory Opinion Submitted by the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law, Case No. 31, Advisory Opinion, 21 May 2024.
Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (1997) adopted 11 December 1997, entered into force 16 February 2005, 2303 UNTS 162.
Minamata Convention on Mercury (2013) adopted 10 October 2013, entered into force 16 August 2017, 3201 UNTS 3.
Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (1987) adopted 16 September 1987, entered into force 1 January 1989, 1522 UNTS 3.
Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from Their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity (2010) adopted 29 October 2010, entered into force 12 October 2014, 3008 UNTS 3.
Paris Agreement (2015) adopted 12 December 2015, entered into force 4 November 2016, 3156 UNTS 79.
Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean (Escazú Agreement) (2018) adopted 4 March 2018, entered into force 22 April 2021, UN Registration No. 56654.
Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (1992) adopted 14 June 1992, in Report of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, UN Doc. A/CONF.151/26 (Vol. I), Annex I.
Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade (1998) adopted 10 September 1998, entered into force 24 February 2004, 2244 UNTS 337.
Statute of the International Court of Justice (1945) adopted 26 June 1945, entered into force 24 October 1945.
Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (2001) adopted 22 May 2001, entered into force 17 May 2004, 2256 UNTS 119.
United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982) adopted 10 December 1982, entered into force 16 November 1994, 1833 UNTS 3.
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992) adopted 9 May 1992, entered into force 21 March 1994, 1771 UNTS 107.
Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer (1985) adopted 22 March 1985, entered into force 22 September 1988, 1513 UNTS 293.
