Drumbl, Mark A. --- "Actors and Law-making in International Environmental Law" [2010] ELECD 589; in Fitzmaurice, Malgosia; Ong, M. David; Merkouris, Panos (eds), "Research Handbook on International Environmental Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: Research Handbook on International Environmental Law

Editor(s): Fitzmaurice, Malgosia; Ong, M. David; Merkouris, Panos

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847201249

Section: Chapter 1

Section Title: Actors and Law-making in International Environmental Law

Author(s): Drumbl, Mark A.

Number of pages: 23

Extract:

1 Actors and law-making in international environmental
law
Mark A. Drumbl



A strikingly diverse number of actors create international environmental law through strik-
ingly diverse processes of law-making. The dynamism of actors and law-making in interna-
tional environmental law contributes to similar developments in international law generally.
Traditionally, the number of actors with international legal personality ­ in other words,
those actors who actually could make international law ­ has been limited. States were
primary among this group, followed by international organizations. In recent years, however,
considerable international environmental law effectively has been generated by non-govern-
mental organizations, networked communities of experts, and administrative secretariats of
treaty organizations. Major international conferences of states serve important social
constructivist functions in setting norms and building consensus.
The expansion in the number of actors that, whether de jure or de facto, make international
environmental law has diversified the sources of international environmental law, thereby
enriching the process by which it is made. Sources of international law include treaties,
custom, general principles of law, and ­ in a subsidiary sense ­ judicial decisions and the
writings of eminent publicists (ICJ Statute, 1945: Art. 38(1) and (2)).1 However, much of
international environmental law is informally generated by `soft law' ­ namely that which is
`not yet or not only law' (Dupuy, 1991: 420) ­ in particular when it comes to setting norms
and defining agendas for formal law-making processes. International environmental law has
seen a particularly dynamic element of soft law-making and, in ...