CYIL vol. 11 (2020)

CYIL 11 (2020) THE NEW TREND OF INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAW … emergence of new regimes, norms, principles that will provide an effective answer to the most relevant environmental issues. Pollution and degradation know no borders and unsustainable activities could present irreparable, or hardly repairable environmental risks to third states. That is the underlying rationale for the law to be sought at the international level. In the normative field, I verified the profusion of norms inserted in the self-contained regime of international law – but as special as they are, not in collision route with general international law –, thus, maintaining its very own principles. However, mistrust in international law itself as incapable of regulating this scenario and impose itself as legal, philosophical, and social source, would underestimate the very international law, giving rise to an unjustified distrust in its most fundamental principles. Notwithstanding this, the critics to fragmentation and to the existence of a specialized environmental law, with broad possibilities of structuring itself, is a critic to the very capacity of manoeuvre of non-developed states and it frustrates cohesion and the engagement efforts of states in the processes of debate and approval of relevant instruments that can coherently promote the protection of the planet. In this sense, custom may be considered a source of international environmental law, precisely because it is a convergence point of the practice of states and opinio juris regarding the environment. Customary international environmental law is a well-known vector of transformation, and the uniformity of agreements and other international instruments that affect environmental protection already shows signs of its existence. One should note the capacity and opportunity of articulation and cohesion of non-developed states to mobilize at the United Nations General Assembly as well as create environmental international custom in their interest.

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