Instead of appearing as a stable set of normative demands opposed to international politics, international law is better understood as an aspect of hegemonic contestation, a technique of articulating political claims in terms of legal rights and duties. The controversies in the law concerning the use of force, the law of peace, human rights, trade and globalisation reflect strategies through which political actors seek to make their preferences appear to be universal ones. But the legal idiom also contains a utopian aspect: it distances political actors from their idiosyncratic preferences and thus creates the international world as a legal community in the act of invoking it.

International law and hegemony: a reconfiguration

Harro van Asselt is a research fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) in Stockholm, Sweden. He is a Visiting Researcher with the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) at the VU University Amsterdam and a Visiting Research Associate with the Environmental Change Institute (ECI) at the University of Oxford. He is also the editor of the Review of European, Comparative and International Environmental Law (RECIEL). He has published extensively on issues related to international climate change law and governance. Th e Fagm enation of G lbal C lim te G ovnance

The Fragmentation of Global Climate Governance: Consequences and Management of Regime Interactions

L’interet pour l’Arctique s’est developpe a travers l’environnement et les changements climatiques, avec avant tout la question du rechauffement climatique, qui bouleversent grandement cette region. Ces evolutions amenent aussi bien de nombreuses menaces que des opportunites importantes, qui demandent toutes une cooperation approfondie pour y repondre. La protection de l’environnement, l’acces et la gestion des ressources (naturelles, energetiques, halieutiques, etc.), l’utilisation des routes maritimes, la delimitation des limites maritimes et limites exterieures du plateau continental, le respect des droits de l’homme et des droits des peuples autochtones, l’aspect strategique et militaire sont des exemples des nombreux enjeux qui existent en Arctique. La cooperation arctique, qui se structure de maniere plus prononcee depuis la fin de la Guerre froide, se trouve devant des defis importants qui demandent son approfondissement. Tous ces enjeux depassent la seule cooperation entre les Etats arctiques, d’autant plus que les consequences et les interets presents sont mondiaux. A la multitude de domaines de cooperation s’ajoute donc une congruence d’acteurs, arctiques et non-arctiques avec, de maniere classique, les organisations internationales, les organisations non-gouvernementales et les multinationales, mais egalement les regions, les organisations interparlementaires, les peuples autochtones ou encore les associations scientifiques. La complexite de la situation se traduit au niveau de la cooperation, qui fait face aux tensions aussi bien entre les acteurs arctiques qu’entre les acteurs arctiques et non-arctiques. Deux processus contradictoires semblent donc structurer la cooperation avec d’une part une regionalisation et d’autre part une internationalisation. La cooperation entre les acteurs arctiques se bâtit ainsi autour de nombreuses institutions internationales dont la structure et le role sont voues a evoluer, avec comme institution centrale le Conseil de l’Arctique, tout en se fondant sur des cooperations internationales globales, avec comme instrument essentiel la Convention sur le droit de la mer de 1982. La cooperation arctique semble constituer un modele interessant reposant sur une flexibilite qui doit permettre une adaptation, d’autant plus importante dans une region exposee a des evolutions rapides. Elle utilise une structure unique mettant en avant une action multiniveaux et multi-acteurs en gardant un equilibre entre hard law et soft law. Si la cooperation arctique structure une veritable region arctique avec une importance grandissante sur l’arene internationale, les liens entre le monde et cette region restent incertains. L’ouverture aux acteurs extra-arctiques est necessaire, mais fait face a la reticence de certains acteurs arctiques. L’Arctique se pose comme un nouvel objet des relations internationales et peut meme en devenir un acteur, mais doit repondre aux dangers qui peuvent exister pour la cooperation dans cette region, dangers qui semblent avant tout venir de causes exogenes. La cooperation arctique necessite donc une analyse approfondie des enjeux qu’elle presente ainsi que des contradictions et paradoxes qui semblent y exister. Cette these vise ainsi a etudier la cooperation arctique en mettant en exergue ses mecanismes et specificites tout en analysant les relations qu’elle peut entretenir avec les acteurs extra-arctiques et la maniere dont elle s’integre dans les relations internationales.

L'Arctique comme enjeu de coopération internationale

tive dynamics between law and diplomacy on international trade and investment. It brings together lawyers and political scientists from Europe and Asia in an interdisciplinary effort at tracing the respective roles of law and diplomacy in the relations of the European Union (EU) with its trade and investment partners in Asia. Focusing on trade and investment relations with Asia, the EU presents a particularly interesting case, as it has been a strong proponent of a rules-based international economic order for years and a frequent user of the formal procedures established in international treaties in case of disputes. At the same time, it has kept diplomatically active to adjust dispute management and international agreements to the needs and demands of the partners involved. Furthermore, not only is this region of crucial importance due to the presence of both vigorous emerging economies, like China, India and Vietnam, and more established partners, like Japan, EU–Asia relations also present a broad set of economic disputes and recent negotiation efforts analyzed in the contributions to this volume. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of international trade/economic law, EU politics, EU external relations (law), international relations, diplomacy and more broadly to international relations and Asian studies.

Law and Diplomacy in the Management of EU–Asia Trade and Investment Relations

La these a pour sujet la green economy dans le droit de l’Union europeenne et se centre sur l’analyse d’un theme qui a ete aborde au niveau juridique ces derniers temps. Partant, l’objectif de la recherche vise a delineer un cadre juridique pour la green economy par rapport a l’Union europeenne, en etudiant la signification de ce terme, en en identifiant les liens avec le droit primaire de l’Union, en examinant la facon dont l’Union utilise son droit (derive) pour favoriser la transition vers une green economy et enfin, en imaginant des scenarios juridiques (probables ou souhaites) susceptibles de se manifester en vertu de la prise en compte des exigences de la green economy par l’Union europeenne.

Green economy et droit de l'Union européenne : discipline et perspectives juridiques

The wide dissemination of sustainable development in international law has generated considerable academic interest. However, because of the evasive and flexible content of what has been termed by the ICJ a concept in the Gabc ˇikovo-Nagymaros case, and more recently an objective in the Pulp Mills case, academic commentary has often struggled to ascertain sustainable development’s legal nature, which has proved a notion defying legal classification. One attractive thesis has been Lowe’s analysis of sustainable development as an interstitial or modifying norm which exerts its normative influence as an interpretative tool in the hands of judges. Its interpretative function is certainly very significant. Judicial bodies have used it to legitimize recourse to evolutive treaty interpretation, as a rule of conflict resolution, and even to redefine conventional obligations. However, beyond this convenient hermeneutical function, by laying down an objective to strive for in hundreds of treaties, sustainable development primarily purports to regulate state conduct. As an objective, it lays down not an absolute but a relative obligation to achieve sustainable development. Such obligations are known as obligations of means or of best efforts. Legal subjects are thus ultimately under an obligation to promote sustainable development.

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Sustainable Development in International Law: Nature and Operation of an Evolutive Legal Norm

Sustainable development was elaborated essentially within the framework of the United Nations and has, since its consecration at the Rio Summit in 1992, widely penetrated both conventional and general international law. Sustainable development lays down a general objective for the international community to achieve, and requires, to this end, the integration of economic, social and environmental considerations. Its intrinsically evolutive nature means that it easily adapts to changing circumstances and to the diversity of situations it is intended to govern. Aimed at reconciling a priori opposing interests through their integration, one of the primary functions of sustainable development is to be found in the influence it exerts on the interpretative process. Its flexibility and malleability make it, in this context, a convenient legal tool granting the judge a significant margin of appreciation. Sustainable development’s evolutive nature can thus authorise a dynamic interpretation of norms; legitimise a balancing exercise in case of conflict; and sometimes even open the door to treaty revision. Sustainable development remains however primarily addressed to States rather than judges, and thus intends to directly constrain the behaviour of legal subjects. Although it may not impose on States an absolute obligation to develop sustainably, it does lay down at least a relative obligation. States must strive to achieve the objective of sustainable development, and in so doing they must adopt a range of measures deemed necessary to its achievement according to the particular set of circumstances. The indeterminate and variable character of the measures necessary for the achievement of sustainable development also narrows down over time and with jurisprudential developments, and the core features of what sustainable development looks like are being slowly identified. As a result, the international judge is today sufficiently well equipped to establish a violation of the obligation to strive to achieve sustainable development.

Le développement durable en droit international : Essai sur les incidences juridiques d’une norme évolutive

Environmental interdependencies place undeniable pressures and challenges on the cardinal principle of state sovereignty and in particular on the principle of national sovereignty over natural resources. This chapter explores whether and how developments in the environmental field have constrained the traditional understanding of sovereignty and possibly changed its meaning. It does so firstly by analysing how the reorganisation of emerging rules and principles around the matrix of sustainable development may allow to move away from a purely conflictual relationship between national sovereignty and resource preservation towards one based on mutual interest. The chapter next reviews the impact of new and redefined legal categories such as common property, common heritage, common concern, or shared resources. It then offers a partial mapping of the widening environmental constraints on national sovereignty flowing from classic duties to protect the rights of others, the existence of an international interest in resource protection, and more innovative and challenging constraints even absent any immediate international interest in resource conservation. Ultimately, the analysis suggests that conceptually, locating national sovereignty and resource protection within the framework of sustainable development and its clear anthropocentric focus permits tensions to be defused and allows for the reconciliation of these two delicately balanced principles.

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Virginie Barral

Papers

Sustainable Development in International Law: Nature and Operation of an Evolutive Legal Norm

Le développement durable en droit international : Essai sur les incidences juridiques d’une norme évolutive

National sovereignty over natural resources: Environmental challenges and sustainable development

Principle 4: Sustainable Development through Integration

“La sentence du Rhin de fer, une nouvelle étape dans la prise en compte du droit de l’environnement par la justice internationale”