PRINCIPLE 10 AND THE COMPLEXITY OF SUSTAINABILITY TRANSITION

THE STANDARD NOTION OF PRINCIPLE 10'S INDISPENSABILITY TO SUSTAINABILITY

In 1992, advanced Western democracies celebrated the adoption of the Rio Declaration and Agenda 21 as a blueprint for a more sustainable world. One of the 27 principles in the Declaration recognized the implementation challenges arising from the fundamental restructuring of the global economy and the need to engage and mobilize the global population. Rio Principle 10 had its roots in the following statement in Our Common Future (The Brundtland Report):

This notion of the common interest, which requires community knowledge and support to be realized, extends even further into the past, to Principle 1 of the Stockholm Declaration of the UN Conference on the Human Environment (1972), the clearest statement in any global legal or political instrument on the fundamental relationship between humans and their environment. Public participation is indispensable to the sentiment in Stockholm Principle 1 that “[humankind] bears a solemn responsibility to protect and improve the environment for present and future generations.” Rio Principle 10 is an expression of the operative principle that through the exercise of civil, political and procedural rights individuals and associations can influence civic space in order to promote policymaking and decision-making that will protect and improve the environment and ensure sustainability.

Application of Principle 10 goes hand-in-hand with the increasing realization of the potential for global harm arising from pollution in its various forms. International law has responded through the progressive development of concepts related to the principle of harm prevention, as elaborated in cases such as the Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Case (Hungary v. Slovakia) and the Pulp Mills on the River Uruguay case (Argentina v. Uruguay), which present a logical framework that can lead towards the gradual acceptance of public participation in environmental decision-making as a necessary component of the international community's due diligence in preventing harm to the global commons.