Faure, Michael; Ying, Song --- "Comparative and Concluding Remarks" [2008] ELECD 354; in Faure, Michael; Ying, Song (eds), "China and International Environmental Liability" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008)

Book Title: China and International Environmental Liability

Editor(s): Faure, Michael; Ying, Song

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847207524

Section: Chapter 13

Section Title: Comparative and Concluding Remarks

Author(s): Faure, Michael; Ying, Song

Number of pages: 14

Extract:

13. Comparative and concluding
remarks
Michael Faure and Song Ying

1 INTERNATIONAL LAW

The chapters dealing with the role of international law as a remedy against
transboundary pollution pay a lot of attention to the various sources of
international law. Many of the chapters in Part I (which explicitly addresses
the role of international law in transboundary pollution incidents) show
the number and variety of treaties that could theoretically be applied to
cases of transboundary environmental pollution. However, notwithstand-
ing this theoretical possibility, many contributions equally show that in
practice it is not always that easy to find a specific treaty with clear obliga-
tions that could lead to the establishment of state responsibility for a
breach of international law. The extensive discussion of the pulp mill liti-
gation between Uruguay and Argentina by Harrison shows that even
when there is a particular treaty dealing with the relationship between both
countries as far as the quality of a specific river is concerned (in casu the
1975 Statute on the River Uruguay) the specific wording is not always clear
enough so that one could easily argue over whether or not an upstream
country breached the particular conditions. Harrison rightly warns that
even though the task of a judicial authority (like the International Court of
Justice (ICJ)) is undoubtedly to interpret the text of a treaty, interpretation
cannot be used as a pretext for rewriting the text of the treaty.
The availability of treaties as such is, moreover, not always a guarantee
...