Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

At the 1972 Stockholm Conference, participating States expressed concern about the extent and consequences of air pollution, laying the groundwork for international legal cooperation to address it. The Action Plan for the Human Environment included the need to promote scientific observation of the atmosphere, and the principles set out in the Stockholm Declaration served, as in other areas of environmental international law, to articulate the response to the threats identified. Since that meeting, the evolution of international legal protection of the atmosphere has been marked by the implementation of three international regimes. The European regime on transboundary air pollution, inaugurated in 1979, was the first model of international cooperation in this field, and influenced subsequent developments in the regimes on ozone layer protection and climate change. Taking into account the foundational impetus that the Stockholm Conference provided for the development of these regimes, this paper analyses the evolution of international legal protection of the atmosphere in the fifty years since the Conference was held

This work aims to analyze the relationships between international environmental law and sustainable development. At present, such relationships are no longer one option among other possible ones, they are an unavoidable necessity. International environmental law cannot be conceived apart from sustainable development. And, vice versa, there can be no sustainable development without incorporating environmental concerns and interests. The fundamental ideas that are defended are that such relationships are not casual, random or fortuitous, but rather they are systemic interactions because they are carried out within the framework of the international legal system that gives them legal coverage and explains their meaning and legal consequences. These systemic relationships are ambivalent since they have some advantages but also some drawbacks. One of the main questions they raise is whether sustainable development contributes to diluting the regulations of international environmental law or whether it has helped to reformulate it in the new international context. In other words, the interpretive question is whether sustainable development has only contributed to softness and/or has also led to its transformation.

The scope of the present work is a reflection on forced migrants in currently the participation of international society in this scenario. Initially, a brief analysis will be made about refugees as members of the group of forced migrants and what are the reasons that justify the granting of international protection, considering, in particular, the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. Subsequently, one of the great challenges of current times will be presented: the recognition of specific legal protection for environmental migrants and the obstacles to the expansion of the meaning of the term refugee. Finally, the research will seek to highlight the role of international society, especially contemporary democracies, for the construction of (new) means of protecting environmental migrants. In order to fulfill these objectives, this manuscript makes use of the deductive method and uses bibliographic research, in particular, legal instruments and specialized doctrine that allow a better understanding of the issue.

El trabajo aborda la cuestión del deber de los Estados de respetar, proteger y hacer efectivos los derechos humanos y, en especial algunos de ellos, con el fin de garantizar un medio ambiente sin riesgos, limpio, saludable y sostenible. Para ello se hace una lectura de la evolución del derecho internacional de los derechos humanos desde esta perspectiva concreta. El estudio, tras una introducción, contiene dos partes sustantivas. La primera se refiere a la identificación de los derechos clave para la protección del medio ambiente e incluye algunos derechos civiles, los derechos procedimentales ambientales y los derechos específicos de participación de los pueblos indígenas. La segunda parte se centra en la protección de las personas defensoras ambientales y analiza su vulnerabilidad, y los instrumentos y mecanismos que se han ido generando para la protección de las personas defensoras de derechos humanos y las personas defensoras ambientales, tanto en el plano internacional como en el plano nacional. El estudio finaliza con unas algunas consideraciones.

In the more recent evolution of the regulation of transboundary freshwater bodies, a progressive influence of developments in international environmental law can be identified. This is a phenomenon that can be described as the "greening" of international watercourse law, in which ecosystem approaches and related issues such as the maintenance of environmental flows are some of its most novel expressions.  This paper provides an identification of the main conventional, jurisprudential and customary manifestations of this trend.

The Stockholm Conference (1972) had an impact on the protection of the marine environment and on the blue governance that has been established for this purpose. This paper analyses its impact on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the steps taken to protect the seas and oceans, from the perspective of the fight against pollution, the protection of marine biodiversity, and the new challenges posed by climate change. An analysis that leaves a negative balance, for which explanations have been sought, among other things, in the complexity of the marine environment, the compartmentalised regulatory framework, and the heterogeneity of institutional cooperation. However, we should be aware that the failure of the measures put in place may be due to an erroneous assessment of reality, the overcoming of which implies the need for a legal system that recognises the rights of nature and protects them.

The study deals with the analysis of the measures implemented by the recent Law 7/2022, of April 8, on waste and contaminated soils for a circular economy, whose objective is to establish the principles of the circular economy through the basic legislation on waste, as well as to contribute to the fight against climate change. In addition to measures related to waste management and against the use of plastic, tax measures have been adopted to incentivize the circular economy, such as a tax on landfill disposal, incineration and co-incineration of waste, a tax on non-reusable plastic packaging or the obligation for local authorities to create a tax to cover the costs related to waste management, in line with the "polluter pays" principle. These instruments are the focus of this paper.

The commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1972 coincides with the 30th anniversary of the Framework Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Conferences of the Parties (COPs) of the main biodiversity-related conventions. This coincidence has given us the opportunity to assess the influence of this first major conference on the adoption of subsequent regulatory instruments for the protection of biodiversity, leading us to realise that, although fragmented, they revolve as in a constellation around the CBD, according to common principles. The celebration of Stockholm+50 has led us to examine the major challenges for the protection of biodiversity, and how they will be addressed at CBD COP15, which has to adopt the Global Framework for Biodiversity and its new targets for the post-2020 period. These major challenges include not only the increasing loss of biodiversity but also problems of compliance with international rules and national plans that should curb it. Despite the shortcomings of biodiversity governance, there is still room for improvement by creating synergies between biodiversity-related conventions and their soft law instruments. Finally, we will examine China's grand proposal for an ecological civilization that makes it possible to make peace with nature as proposed by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Legislación básica de protección del medio ambiente (Segundo Semestre 2022)

Jurisprudencia ambiental en La Rioja (Segundo semestre 2022)