Part V Key Concepts, Ch.22 Transboundary Impacts
Günther Handl
From: The Oxford Handbook of International Environmental Law
Edited By: Daniel Bodansky, Jutta Brunnée, Ellen Hey
- Subject(s):
- Customary international law — State practice — Sovereignty — Pollution — International watercourses — Responsibility of international organizations
To date the concept of transboundary impact has served as the principal conceptual vehicle for ascertaining international rights and responsibilities regarding the environment. Other notions, such as ‘intergenerational responsibility’ (see Chapter 27 ‘Equity’) or ‘sustainable development’ (see Chapter 26 ‘Sustainable Development’), while clearly gaining in importance recently, have yet to attract the international community’s imprimatur as operational legal concepts that, in a legal system still dominated by states, could rival the function that transboundary...
