Foreword

It is with pleasure that I write a foreword to this timely exposition and analysis of the system of environmental law as a whole, and as it stands after the Rio Conference. If it seems a little bold to call environmental law a ‘system’, it is assuredly not so bold as it would have been before the publication of Philippe Sands' important work. A main purpose of academic writing should be to perceive and portray patterns and relations in a body of legal rules so as to make it manageable, teachable, comprehensible and usable. The present work succeeds in doing this to a remarkable degree.

The author's statement that environmental law has a ‘longer history than some might suggest’ might be thought to border on understatement. When something is taken up as a modish ‘concern’, there is often a strong temptation to think of it as a discovery by a newly enlightened generation. It is, therefore, a useful antidote to be reminded that, of the two pioneering decisions, both still leading and much-cited cases, one was the Bering Sea arbitration, of a century ago, and the other, the Trail Smelter arbitration, of half a century ago. Nevertheless, the present-day need for law to protect the environment and to preserve resources is of a scale and urgency far beyond the imagining of the early pioneers.