227
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to
Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
L. Westra et al. (eds.), Ecological Integrity in Science and Law,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46259-8_19
Opportunity Within Failure: Can
the Global Pact for the Environment Learn
from Responsibility to Protect?
Prue Taylor
Abstract The Global Pact for the Environment is a legal initiative that seeks to
promote significant change to international environmental law and governance.
Initial efforts to gain state acceptance through United Nations processes have faltered. This chapter considers what can be learnt from the emergence and acceptance
of the doctrine of ‘responsibility to protect’, that could inform future efforts to pursue either the Global Pact or other more transformative legal initiatives. The main
finding is that the history of ‘responsibility to protect’ has much offer civil society
in the search for transformative approaches to state sovereignty in an age of collapsing ecological integrity.
1 Introduction
The Global Pact for the Environment (GPE) came to international prominence very
quickly. In early 2017 the President of the French Constitutional Council invited a
group of legal experts to create a draft document. A few months later, a working
draft was publicly presented to the world, under the auspices of the French legal
think tank, Le Club des Juristes. By May 2018 the United Nations General Assembly
(UNGA) had passed a resolution establishing an ad hoc open-ended working group
(OEWG) to begin consultations on the GPE and calling for a technical report to
guide that work. Following completion of the technical report (known as the 'gap
report'), the OEWG met three times in Nairobi (January, March and May 2019) to
consider the report and recommend next steps to the UNGA (GPE.org). However,
by the end of May 2019, GPE proponents declared the final recommendations a
‘failure’ and a ‘serious set-back’ for the GPE. Other rhetoric called the outcome
P. Taylor (*)
School of Architecture and Planning, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
e-mail: Prue.taylor@auckland.ac.nz
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to
Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
L. Westra et al. (eds.), Ecological Integrity in Science and Law,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46259-8_19
Opportunity Within Failure: Can
the Global Pact for the Environment Learn
from Responsibility to Protect?
Prue Taylor
Abstract The Global Pact for the Environment is a legal initiative that seeks to
promote significant change to international environmental law and governance.
Initial efforts to gain state acceptance through United Nations processes have faltered. This chapter considers what can be learnt from the emergence and acceptance
of the doctrine of ‘responsibility to protect’, that could inform future efforts to pursue either the Global Pact or other more transformative legal initiatives. The main
finding is that the history of ‘responsibility to protect’ has much offer civil society
in the search for transformative approaches to state sovereignty in an age of collapsing ecological integrity.
1 Introduction
The Global Pact for the Environment (GPE) came to international prominence very
quickly. In early 2017 the President of the French Constitutional Council invited a
group of legal experts to create a draft document. A few months later, a working
draft was publicly presented to the world, under the auspices of the French legal
think tank, Le Club des Juristes. By May 2018 the United Nations General Assembly
(UNGA) had passed a resolution establishing an ad hoc open-ended working group
(OEWG) to begin consultations on the GPE and calling for a technical report to
guide that work. Following completion of the technical report (known as the 'gap
report'), the OEWG met three times in Nairobi (January, March and May 2019) to
consider the report and recommend next steps to the UNGA (GPE.org). However,
by the end of May 2019, GPE proponents declared the final recommendations a
‘failure’ and a ‘serious set-back’ for the GPE. Other rhetoric called the outcome
P. Taylor (*)
School of Architecture and Planning, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
e-mail: Prue.taylor@auckland.ac.nz