Chapter 1 introduces the main themes of the book. It highlights three vantages on what it means to value nature on an aesthetic basis – philosophies of environmental aesthetics, aesthetic theories for the visual arts, and practices of international environmental law. It provides an outline of the book over the eight chapters, explaining how the different vantages on nature’s aesthetic value inform the analysis of photographic images in the book’s case studies of the World Heritage Convention, the Whaling Convention and the Biodiversity Convention. An overview of the international materials examined, and the visual art analysed, is provided. Here, particular mention is made of the book’s use of the rules and documentation of the decision-making processes of the World Heritage Committee, the International Court of Justice, and the Conference of the Parties to the Biodiversity Convention. In a final section, the scholarly theories that inform the book’s methods of analysis are introduced. This includes discussion of academic literature on law and image, sometimes called visual jurisprudence, and debates among philosophers of environmental aesthetics and theorists of visual art.

Chapter 6 progresses away from aesthetic judgements in the administration of an international environmental treaty to aesthetic representations made by states in the context of a treaty being enforced. Specifically, it analyses photographs submitted to the International Court of Justice in the Whaling in the Antarctic case by the disputing parties, Australia and Japan. That dispute concerned an exception to bans on whaling for scientific research under the Whaling Convention, one of three treaties examined in the book. The chapter identifies photographs of whales used by the parties before considering their potential role as evidence and as rhetoric. Acknowledging formal practices of the Court that treat images as evidence, it argues that aesthetic theory must be employed to understand the photographs as representations of aesthetic values in law rather than as records of fact. Visual art from Australia and Japan is then analysed to construct meanings of the aesthetic value of whales from the photographs in ways relevant to the parties’ claims. The chapter argues that the Court should recognise the images used in proceedings for their relevance to interpretation of the law.

The Biodiversity Convention, expressly protecting aesthetic value as one of several biodiversity values listed in its preamble, is the last of the three treaties examined for the book. Chapter 7 revisits meanings of the aesthetic value of biodiversity developed earlier, with doctrinal approaches to treaty interpretation, to develop an aesthetic account of the photographs used in the fourth edition of the Global Biodiversity Outlook – a report that was prepared at the direction of the Conference of the Parties to the Biodiversity Convention to assess progress towards the Aichi Targets. The chapter’s aesthetic analysis of the photographs suggests fragmented meanings of aesthetic value as scenic beauty, wilderness, culture and subsistence, leaving valuations of biodiversity on observable economic grounds to prevail. The chapter argues that a critical analysis of the photographs can articulate pluralised appreciations of biodiversity in terms distinct from economic gains. Such insights could serve the protection of the range of biodiversity values identified in the Aichi Targets as fundamental to implementing the Biodiversity Convention in ways relevant to future work of the parties.

The treaty processes examined so far are replete with nature photographs. To consider the significance of such images, Chapter 4 starts by explaining aesthetic theorisations of nature in visual art. Over philosophical objections, it maintains that artistic depictions of the environment can be understood both critically, for example with insights from eco-criticism, and in terms of the multi-sensory experiences contemplated by philosophers of environmental aesthetics. The chapter then describes conceptions of ‘image’ in aesthetic theory for the arts, and in the field of law and aesthetics or, more particularly, visual jurisprudence. Despite a privileging of worded text, law’s visual manifestations have been identified by jurisprudents of common and civil law. The aesthetic analysis of visual art for law by scholars such as Desmond Manderson is found in studies of art for international law, and for environmental law. This chapter argues that understandings of image in scholarship for the arts can be combined with the distinct characterisations of the environment by philosophers of environmental aesthetics, to analyse the concept of aesthetic value for international environmental law.

Chapter 2 contemplates the environment’s ‘aesthetic’ value from philosophical perspectives. It outlines themes in the philosophy of environmental aesthetics, paying particular attention to Emily Brady’s integrated theory of environmental aesthetics. Brady attempts to marry subjective elements of aesthetic value – sensory, imaginative and emotional responses shaped by different cultures – with an objective ‘disinterest’ that permits comparisons for the purposes of environmental policy. The chapter then examines international legal scholarship on ‘aesthetic’ value as a term of international environmental treaties. Often framed by environmental ethics, the aesthetic value described by these scholars is one of several motivating states in their international agreement to protect the environment. This literature typically associates aesthetic value with natural beauty in ways rejected in the philosophy of environmental aesthetics as privileging only visual appreciations of nature, and critiqued as an Anglo-American ideal. The chapter argues that understandings of aesthetic value in international environmental law should be informed by philosophies of environmental aesthetics.

Chapter 5 is the first of three dedicated to the analysis of environmental images used in decision-making processes of international environmental treaties that protect the environment’s aesthetic value. It draws on philosophies of environmental aesthetics and critical theories for visual art, to examine images created in the process of inscribing natural properties in the World Heritage List for their ‘outstanding universal value’ from an ‘aesthetic’ point of view under the World Heritage Convention. Two kinds of images are identified: verbal images in the Statements of Outstanding Universal Value endorsed by the World Heritage Committee; and photographs submitted by states parties in nominations of natural properties to the World Heritage List in Australia, Chad, China, Kenya and Mexico. It argues that a reasoned determination of aesthetic value by the World Heritage Committee should engage aesthetic concepts and methods to evaluate the aesthetic value of world natural heritage. Aesthetic philosophy would support an account of the photographs as representations of the environment’s aesthetic value, as well as providing an aesthetic basis for interpreting those representations.

No international legal judgment has determined the meaning of the environment’s aesthetic value. But many officials interpret words for international law, including those that must negotiate and administer treaties. Chapter 3 looks to such instances of interpretation as it analyses the meaning of ‘aesthetic’ value in accordance with the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. It considers the meaning of ‘aesthetic’ value as an express term of the conventions on world heritage and biodiversity, and as a term informing the interpretation of the Whaling Convention. Applying doctrinal techniques of treaty interpretation, the chapter argues for understandings of aesthetic value theorised among philosophers of environmental aesthetics. However, the practice of treaty bodies suggests interpretations of aesthetic value that are conflated with natural beauty, cultural value and ethical concerns. The chapter observes that orthodox sources for treaty interpretation are written documents and argues that an examination of visual sources should also be entertained. Images, such as photographs, could provide a rich account of the environment’s aesthetic value in international legal practice.

The final chapter 8 considers the implications of an aesthetic analysis of images for international legal practice. International bodies making decisions under the three treaties examined in the book conflate and displace aesthetic value in favour of other environmental values, risking the integrity of their decisions and, ultimately, the protection of the environment for its aesthetic value under international environmental law. Photographs could be formally acknowledged for their relevance to the interpretation of the treaties and used in decision-making processes to conceive aesthetic appreciation of the environment in ways important for all nation states. They can encapsulate a sensorial experience of the natural environment shaped by imagination, emotion and knowledge from different cultures. But a critical analysis of such images is also important to distinguish aesthetic value from other environmental values such as natural beauty, cultural value and ethical value. An accommodation of aesthetic concepts and methods to develop meanings from images for the interpretation of international environmental treaties could also be taken up for other fields of international law.