The 1972 Stockholm Declaration at Reflecting on a Half-Century of International Environmental Law
A symposium in celebration of the publication of the fiftieth volume of the Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law
Friday, October 8th, 2021 For more information, please visit:
www.law.uga.edu/gjiclfall2021
Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law and the Dean Rusk International Law Center present
The 1972 Stockholm Declaration at Fifty: Reflecting on a Half-Century of International Environmental Law A symposium in celebration of the publication of the fiftieth volume of the Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law
Friday, 8 October 2021 University of Georgia School of Law Dean Rusk International Law Center
The 1972 Stockholm Declaration at Fifty: Reflecting on a Half-Century of International Environmental Law The 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment marked the first major international recognition that the environment is a matter of common concern. The conference, held in Stockholm, Sweden, produced the “Stockholm Declaration,” an environmental manifesto that forcefully declared a human right to environmental health. The Stockholm conference and its Declaration, now approaching their 50th anniversary, birthed the field of modern international environmental law, which quickly became one of the fastest-growing areas of international cooperation. In the nearly 50 years since the Stockholm Declaration, the international community has negotiated hundreds of agreements covering topics as diverse and important as protection of biological diversity and endangered species, transboundary movements of hazardous waste and chemicals, acid rain, depletion of the ozone layer, and climate change. In celebration of its 50th anniversary volume, the Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law is convening a conference to reflect on the first 50 years of international environmental law, and the lessons this history may hold for the future. The conference will critically evaluate the Stockholm Declaration’s articulation of first principles, asking how they have shaped the field over the past half century and whether they have continuing utility for the challenges of the early 21st century. Should international environmental law should seek new lodestars? How would a 2022 version of the Stockholm Declaration define its project? In particular, the 1972 Stockholm Declaration placed environmental concerns within the framework of human rights. It declared, in the genderexclusive language of the time, that “[m]an has the fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being.” Later, the 1992 Rio Declaration moved away from a human rights approach and balanced environmental protection with the right to development, a balancing that, critics claim, shifted focus and priorities away from environmental protection. The Stockholm Declaration had explicitly eschewed this approach, declaring that development should be “compatible with the need to protect and improve [the] environment.” The Stockholm Declaration also
repeatedly condemned racism, and explicitly linked environmental protection with anti-racism and decolonization, themes that fell away with the Rio Declaration in 1972. Sponsored by: Dean Rusk International Law Center, University of Georgia School of Law Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law American Society of International Law University of Georgia Co-Sponsors include: International Law Society Environmental Law Association Georgia Initiative for Climate & Society Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources School of Public and International Affairs Center for International Trade and Security Global Health Institute, College of Public Health School of Social Work College of Environmental Design
Schedule All sessions available remotely via Zoom. Friday, October 8th 9:00-9:10
Welcome Addresses Peter B. “Bo” Rutledge University of Georgia School of Law Melissa J. "MJ" Durkee University of Georgia School of Law Eva Hunnius Ohlin Senior Advisor for Energy and Environment, Embassy of Sweden
9:10-10:25
Panel 1: The Rights-Based Approach to Environmental Protection How and in what contexts is the Stockholm Declaration’s rights-based approach to environmental protection useful, and what are limitations of this approach?
Nnimmo Bassey | Health of Mother Earth Foundation Tyler Giannini | Harvard Law Kate Mackintosh | UCLA School of Law Katie O'Bryan | Monash University
Moderator | Diane Marie Amann University of Georgia School of Law 10:25-10:40
Panel 1 Breakout Rooms
10:40-10:50
Break
10:50-12:05
Panel 2: Anti-Racism, Decolonization, and Environmental Protection How does international environmental law address or fail to address environmental racism?
Sumudu Anopama Atapattu | University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Law Robin Bronen | Alaska Institute for Justice Sarah Riley Case | McGill University Faculty of Law Usha Natarajan | Columbia University Moderator ǀ Harlan G. Cohen University of Georgia School of Law 12:05-12:20
Panel 2 Breakout Rooms
12:20-1:00
Lunch Break
1:00-2:15
Panel 3: International Environmental Law’s Future What are the successes and failures of the last 50 years o environmental law? What are the key international environmental law challenges for the next 50 years?
Rebecca M. Bratspies | City University New York School of Law Jutta Brunnée | University of Toronto Faculty of Law Lakshman D. Guruswamy | University of Colorado at Boulder Law School Cymie Payne | Department of Human Ecology and School of Law, Rutgers University Moderator ǀ Melissa J. "MJ" Durkee University of Georgia School of Law 2:15-2:30
Panel 3 Breakout Rooms
2:30-2:40
Break
2:40-2:45
Welcome Address Adam D. Orford University of Georgia School of Law
2:45-3:15
Keynote Address Stockholm Plus 50: Glass Half Full, Half Empty, or Shattered?
Dinah L. Shelton | George Washington University School of Law 3:15-3:25
Editor-in-Chief, Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law Kimberlee Styple | University of Georgia School of Law
Speaker Biographies Diane Marie Amann | University of Georgia School of Law Diane Marie Amann, the Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law and Faculty Co-Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center at the University of Georgia School of Law, has served since 2012 as the International Criminal Court Prosecutor’s Special Adviser on Children in & affected by Armed Conflict. Author of scholarship in fields including international and transnational criminal justice, public international law, human rights, constitutional law, legal history, and security governance, Amann is writing a book on the roles women played at the post-World War II international criminal trials in Nuremberg. She is a Counsellor and a past Vice President of the American Society of International Law. Sumudu Anopama Atapattu | University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Law Sumudu Atapattu, LLM, PhD (Cambridge), Attorney-at-law (Sri Lanka), is the Director of Research Centers and International Programs at the University of Wisconsin Law School. She teaches seminar classes on “International Environmental Law” and “Climate Change, Human Rights and the Environment.” She is affiliated with UW-Madison's Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, Global Health Institute, the Center for South Asia, and the 4W Initiative, and is the Executive Director of the Human Rights Program. She serves as the Lead Counsel for Human Rights at the Center for International Sustainable Development Law, Montreal, affiliated faculty at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute for Human Rights, Sweden, and has been a visiting professor at several universities in the world. She has been invited to attend
several UN expert consultations and present at conferences around the world. Her publications include Emerging Principles of International Environmental Law (Transnational, 2006), Human Rights Approaches to Climate Change: Challenges and Opportunities (Routledge, 2016), International Environmental Law and the Global South (co-editor, CUP, 2015); Human Rights and Environment: Key Issues (coauthor, Routledge, 2019) and The Cambridge Handbook on Environmental Justice and Sustainable Development (coeditor, CUP, forthcoming). Before moving to the USA, she was a senior lecturer at Faculty of Law, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, and consultant to the Law & Society Trust, Colombo. Nnimmo Bassey | HOMEF Nnimmo Bassey is director of the ecological think tank Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) and a member of the steering committee of Oilwatch International. He was chair of Friends of the Earth International (2008-2012) and co-founder and executive director of Nigeria’s Environmental Rights Action (1993-2013), an NGO based in Nigeria, working on environmental human rights issues. He was a corecipient of the 2010 Right Livelihood Award, also known as the “Alternative Noble Prize.” In 2012 he received the Rafto Human Rights Award. In 2014 he received Nigeria’s national honor as Member of the Federal Republic (MFR) in recognition of his environmental activism. Bassey is a fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Architects and has authored books on the environment, architecture, and poetry. His books include two volumes of poetry—“We Thought It Was Oil, But It was Blood” (Kraft Books, 2002), and “I Will Not Dance to Your Beat” (Kraft Books, 2011)—as well as “To Cook a Continent: Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa” (Pambazuka Press, 2012) and “Oil Politics:
Echoes of Ecological War” (Daraja Press, 2016). Bassey’s main campaigning focus is oil and the enormous damage caused to Nigerian communities and other oilproducing regions. He also supports a broad movement across sub-tropical African countries where new oil finds are being made. Rebecca Bratspies | City University New York School of Law Rebecca Bratspies is the founding Director of the Center for Urban Environmental Reform. She serves as an appointed member of the New York City’s Environmental Justice Advisory Panel, and EPA’s Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee. Professor Bratspies also serves as a scholar with the Center for Progressive Reform, as a core member of the Global Network for the Study of Human Rights and the Environment, and on the editorial board of the International Journal of Law in Context. She is a past member of the ABA Standing Committee on Environmental Law, Past-President of the American Association of Law Schools Section on the Environment, and a former advisor to the Consultative Group on Agricultural Research. A former Luce Scholar and law clerk to US Court of Appeals Judge C. Arlen Beam, she is a graduate of Wesleyan University and holds a law degree cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of environmentally-themes comic books Mayah’s Lot and Bina’s Plant, bringing environmental literacy to a new generation of environmental leaders. Bratspies has been involved with grass-roots training on the importance of the census, and published We All Count to that end. At CUNY, Bratspies teaches classes on property, climate change, environmental justice, administrative law, and environmental law.
Robin Bronen | Alaska Institute for Justice Robin Bronen works as a human rights attorney and has been researching and working with communities forced to relocate because of climate change since 2007.Her research has been publicized by CNN and the Guardian, among others. She has worked with the White House Council on Environmental Quality to implement President Obama’s Climate Change Task Force recommendation to address climate displacement as well as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Climate Change Office. She is a senior research scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and co-founded and works as the executive director of the Alaska Institute for Justice, a non-governmental organization that is the only immigration legal service provider in Alaska. The Alaska Institute for Justice houses a language interpreter center, training bilingual Alaskans to be interpreters, and also serves as a research and policy institute focused on climate and social justice issues.The Alaska Bar Association awarded Bronen the 2007 Robert Hickerson Public Service award and 2012 International Human Rights award. The Federal Bureau of Investigation awarded the Alaska Institute for Justice the 2012 FBI Director’s Community Service award for its work with human trafficking victims, and the International Soroptimist’s awarded Bronen the 2012 Advancing the Rights of Women award. Victims for Justice awarded her the Advocacy award in 2014. Jutta Brunnée | University of Toronto Faculty of Law Dean, University Professor & James Marshall Tory Dean’s Chair, University of Toronto. Dean Brunnée’s teaching and research interests are in the areas of Public International Law,
International Environmental Law and International Legal Theory. She has published extensively in each of these areas. Her current research agenda explores the role of international legality and legal practices in mediating between stability and change in international law. Dean Brunnée is co-author of International Climate Change Law (OUP 2017), which was awarded the American Society of International Law’s 2018 Certificate of Merit “in a specialized area of international law” and was recently translated into Korean, and of Legitimacy and Legality in International Law: An Interactional Account (CUP 2010), which was awarded the American Society of International Law’s 2011 Certificate of Merit “for preeminent contribution to creative scholarship.” Dean Brunnée also is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of International Environmental Law (Oxford University Press, 2007). In 1998-99, she was the “Scholar-in-Residence” in the Legal Bureau of the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, advising, inter alia, on matters under the Biodiversity and Climate Change Conventions. From 2006 to 2016, she served on the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law. She was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2013, and Associate of the Institut de Droit International in 2017. In 2019, she delivered a course on “Procedure and Substance in International Environmental Law” at The Hague Academy of International Law, published in the Academy's Collected Courses / Recueil des Cours series (2020). In 2020, Dean Brunnée was appointed University Professor, the University of Toronto’s highest and most distinguished academic rank. Harlan G. Cohen | University of Georgia School of Law Harlan Grant Cohen holds the Gabriel M. Wilner/UGA Foundation Professorship in International Law and serves as
a Faculty Co-Director of the law school's Dean Rusk International Law Center. Cohen came to Athens from the New York University School of Law, where he was a Furman Fellow and researched national security law, international law, and legal history. His scholarship has appeared in the George Washington, Tulane, Iowa, and New York University law reviews and the Yale, Berkeley, NYU, and Michigan journals of international law, among other places. Cohen is a member of the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law and a member of the American Law Institute. Previously, Cohen has served as a member of the executive council of the American Society of International Law and served as co-chair of the society’s 106th Annual Meeting. He currently serves as vice chair of the American Society of International Law’s International Legal Theory interest group. Melissa J. "MJ" Durkee | University of Georgia School of Law Melissa J. "MJ" Durkee currently serves as the University of Georgia School of Law's associate dean for international programs and director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center, which serves as the law school's international law and policy nucleus for education, scholarship and other collaborations. She also holds the Allen Post Professorship. Her research focuses on legal rules that structure participation by non-state actors in international lawmaking and global governance institutions, and interactions between government and business actors that affect the content and success of international legal regimes. Durkee’s scholarship has been published in journals such as the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the UCLA Law Review, the Virginia Law Review and the Columbia Human Rights Law Review.
She also served for three years as managing editor of AJIL Unbound and has held a number of leadership positions in the American Society of International Law. Before entering the legal academy, Durkee was an associate at the New York office of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, where she specialized in international litigation and arbitration. She earned her law degree from Yale Law School, where she served on the Yale Law Journal and the Yale Journal of International Law. She studied at the Universidad de Chile while in law school and at the University of Oxford while pursuing her undergraduate education. Tyler Giannini | Harvard Law Tyler Giannini is a Clinical Professor at Harvard Law School, and a Co-Director of its International Human Rights Clinic. Giannini’s work focuses on human rights and the environment, including climate change displacement, as well as accountability litigation and business and human rights. He has a particular commitment to community-centered approaches to human rights and extensive experience with Myanmar and South Africa. He also has a strong interest in social entrepreneurship and clinical pedagogy in the human rights context. Prior to joining HLS, Giannini was a founder and director of EarthRights International, an organization at the forefront of efforts to link human rights and environmental protection. He has written about and advocated on many issues, including international crimes; harmful effects of large dams; transitional justice; abuses related to the mining industry; multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs); and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. He has undertaken investigations and advocacy efforts in many
countries, including Bolivia, Canada, Cambodia, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, South Africa, Thailand, and the United States. Lakshman D. Guruswamy | University of Colorado at Boulder Law School Lakshman Guruswamy, a nationally and internationally recognized expert in International Environmental and Global Energy Law was born in Sri Lanka, and was the Nicholas Doman Professor of International Environmental Law, at the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU) Law School. Prior to joining CU, he taught in Sri Lanka, the UK, and the Universities of Iowa and Arizona. At CU, he taught International Environmental Law, Global Energy Justice, Oil and International Relations, and International Law. He was the director of international energy programs at the GetchesWilkinson Center, and presently heads the Global Energy Justice Initiative at the University of Colorado. His research uses interdisciplinary frameworks to explore how and why energy justice calls for the fashioning of practical energy solutions, for the energy poor inhabiting the least developed parts of the developing world. Lakshman is widely published, and is a frequent speaker at scholarly meetings in the US and around the world. He is the author of Global Energy Justice: Law and Policy (West, 2016), International Energy and Poverty: The Emerging Frontiers (Routledge, 2016), and the co-author of International Environmental Law and World Order (2nd. 1999), Biological Diversity: Converging Strategies (1998), Arms Control and the Environment (2001). The 6th edition of International Environmental Law in a Nutshell, is due in 2021. He has authored over 50 scholarly articles published in law reviews and other peer reviewed journals, and was the recipient of the 2016 Senior
Scholar award granted by the Environmental Academy of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Kate Mackintosh | UCLA School of Law Kate Mackintosh is the inaugural Executive Director of the Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA School of Law. Mackintosh has worked in the fields of human rights, international criminal justice, and the protection of civilians for over two decades. She was involved in the development of international criminal law in its fledgling years and contributed to defining many elements of this new area of law, such as the elements of rape as an international crime, the definition of protected persons, and the scope of complicity for international crimes. She has held multiple roles at international criminal tribunals, worked in post-conflict human rights field operations, and for eight years led Humanitarian Affairs at Doctors without Borders. Most recently, she was Deputy co-Chair of the Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide. Usha Natarajan | Columbia University Usha Natarajan (PhD, MA, LLB, BA) is Edward W Said Fellow at Columbia University, Global South Visiting Scholar at the University of British Columbia, Senior Fellow at Melbourne Law School, and International Schulich Visiting Scholar at Dalhousie University. Her research is interdisciplinary, utilizing postcolonial and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) to provide an interrelated understanding of development, environment, migration and conflict. Natarajan's research is the recipient of numerous global awards and grants including from the European Union, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. She is
widely published and serves on the editorial and advisory boards of several international law journals. Natarajan was tenured at the American University in Cairo as Associate Professor of International Law and Associate Director of the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies. Prior to that she worked with the United Nations and its agencies in Asia and the Pacific including with UNDP, UNESCO and the World Bank. Katie O’Bryan | Monash University Katie O’Bryan joined the Law Faculty in 2015, having taught at Monash since 2012. Prior to entering academia, she practiced as a solicitor in native title, acting for native title claim groups in both Western Australia and Victoria. She holds a Master of Laws in Environmental Law from Macquarie University and a PhD from Monash focusing on the legal recognition of Indigenous water rights. Katie's research and teaching interests include Indigenous Legal Rights, Native Title, Water Law, Rights of Nature laws, Constitutional Law, Administrative Law and Public Law and Statutory Interpretation. O’Bryan is a member of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law at Monash University, a commissioning editor of the Australian Environment Review, and the author of 'Indigenous Rights and Water Resource Management: Not Just Another Stakeholder (Routledge, 2019). Adam D. Orford | University of Georgia School of Law Adam D. Orford joined the University of Georgia School of Law in the fall of 2021 as an assistant professor teaching Environmental Law, Renewal Energy Law and Policy, and a Climate Law seminar.
Orford comes to UGA from the University of California, Berkeley, where he recently received his Ph.D. from the Energy & Resources Group. His research interests include environmental law and policy, climate change law and policy, renewable energy law and policy, and U.S. political history. While at Berkeley, he conducted research for the California Public Utilities Commission and the California Energy Commission. His recent scholarship has appeared, or is forthcoming, in the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, the Hastings Environmental Law Journal and the Georgetown Environmental Law Review. Prior to returning to the academy, Orford practiced law in New York City and Portland, Oregon, specializing in environmental litigation. While in law school he served as editor-in-chief of the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law. Cymie Payne | Department of Human Ecology and School of Law, Rutgers University Cymie Payne is Associate Professor in the Department of Human Ecology and the Law School, Rutgers University. She currently researches Earth system governance in international law. She appeared as legal counsel before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, provided expert opinions on environmental reparations at the International Court of Justice, and practiced law with the United Nations, the U.S. Department of the Interior and the law firm of Goodwin, Procter. She participated in landmark decisions on the legal responsibility of aggressor states for reparations from armed conflict as counsel to the UN Compensation Commission in Geneva, Switzerland and has published frequently on protection of the environment in relation to
armed conflict. As Director of the Global Commons Project at University of California Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment, she focused on the linkage of state and international climate policy. Professor Payne currently participates in the negotiation of a new international agreement for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. She is the Chair of the Ocean Specialist Group of the International Union for Conservation of Nature-World Commission on Environmental Law; and has served as a member of the International Law Association’s Role of International Law in Sustainable Natural Resource Management for Development Committee, and held leadership positions with the American Society of International Law. Sarah Riley Case | Boulton Junior Fellow, McGill University Faculty of Law Sarah is a Boulton Junior Fellow and a future Assistant Professor, where she was hired for a post in slavery and the law, critical race theory and Black life. She is a Trudeau Foundation doctoral scholar at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law and a Fulbright visitor at Harvard Law School's Institute for Global Law and Policy. She previously visited Melbourne Law School. In winter 2021, she taught Critical Race Theory and the Law at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. Sarah's recent publications include a book chapter, 'Homelands of Mary Ann Shadd' on this Black abolitionist, drawing on Cedric Robinson's concept of the Black radical tradition. She explores themes of erasure and the 'politics of recognition' in international law's narratives (in Immi Tallgren
(ed), Portraits of Women in International Law: New Names and Forgotten Faces?). Another recent publication is 'Thoughts of Liberation' in Canadian Art (with Nataleah Hunter-Young), which puts 10 Black women poets, scholars, artists and activists in conversation. Her chapter, 'Redressing Historical Responsibility for the Precarities of Climate Change in the Present' (with Julia Dehm) undertakes an immanent critique of international law to argue that climate change is tied to histories of dispossession and, as such, full repair for this problem demands radical change through reparations for states in the Global South, people living in poverty, and Black, Indigenous and other marginalized peoples in settler colonial states. Sarah's thesis traces how people of the Third World sought to address the novel problem of climate change during the 'decolonization era' by matching a representation of nature (as a commons) with their aspirations to rebuild international law to achieve racial, political and economic justice. She explores the ways in which law developed, focusing on its progress narratives and its reproduction of racial subjugation. Dinah L. Shelton | George Washington University School of Law Dinah L. Shelton joined the law school faculty in 2004. Before her appointment, she was professor of international law and director of the doctoral program in international human rights law at the University of Notre Dame Law School from 1996-2004. She previously taught at Santa Clara University and was a visiting lecturer at the University of California, Davis, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, the University of Paris, and the University of Strasbourg, France. From 1987 to 1989, she was the director of the Office of Staff Attorneys at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Professor Shelton is the author or editor of three prizewinning books: Protecting Human Rights in the Americas (winner of the 1982 Inter-American Bar Association Book Prize and co-authored with Thomas Buergenthal); Remedies in International Human Rights Law (awarded the 2000 Certificate of Merit, American Society of International Law); and the three volume Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity (awarded a “Best Research” book award by the New York Public Library). She also has authored many articles and books on international law, human rights law, and international environmental law. She has been a member of the board of editors of the American Journal of International Law and was a vice-president of the American Society of International Law. She became professor emeritus on July 1, 2015.
Sponsored by Dean Rusk International Law Center, University of Georgia School of Law Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law American Society of International Law University of Georgia Co-Sponsors include: International Law Society Environmental Law Association Georgia Initiative for Climate & Society Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources School of Public and International Affairs Center for International Trade and Security Global Health Institute, College of Public Health School of Social Work College of Environment and Design