The Global Pact for the Environment is a new United Nations treaty that will be presented to the UN General Assembly in September by French President Emmanuel Macron. Should the UN adopt the treaty, it will be the first time environmental rights will have legal and binding power at national and international levels and can be used in courts.
The Pact gathers fundamental and common principles of environmental law, including the 1972 Stockholm Declaration, the 1982 World Charter for Nature, the 1992 Rio Declaration and the Earth Charter. The proposal originated in November 2015 report of the Environmental Commission of Le Club des Juristes, a French think tank. The drafting initiative is chaired by Laurent Fabius, president of the Constitutional Council of the French Republic and former president of the 2015 Paris Climate Conference.
With operational support from Le Club des Juristes, a drafting committee was convened in Paris on June 23. The 30-member committee included Maria Ivanova, director of the Center for Governance and Sustainability and associate professor at the John McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. President Macron introduced the Global Pact on June 24 to an audience of advocates of global environmental governance that included former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, IUCN President Zhang Xinsheng, Chair of the R20 – Regions of Climate Action Arnold Schwarzenegger; and Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and UN Special Envoy on Climate Change.
The next step is a one-day conference on September 20 at Columbia University in New York hosted by the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. For more information about on The Global Pact for the Environment click here. To learn more about measurable implementation of environmental treaties read Maria Ivanova for Global Challenges Foundation.
