At UN Summit, senior judges present action plan to strengthen environmental laws

Over 100 senior judges from across the planet meeting at the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, have adopted an action plan to enforce laws aimed at guarding nature, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) announced today.

The Johannesburg Principles on the Role of Law and Sustainable Development, drafted last week by the UNEP-organized Global Judges Symposium, were kept confidential until today so that they could be delivered first to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, according to the agency.

The plan hinges on improving the capacity, training, funding and education of legal experts, particularly in developing nations. The experts stress that the worldwide effort to crack down on pollution, challenge environmentally damaging developments, and comply with agreements covering issues such as hazardous wastes and the trade in endangered species have been undermined partly as a result of weaknesses in the legal systems of many nations.

These weaknesses are particularly acute in many developing States and countries of the former Soviet Union where a number of obstacles, including difficult economic conditions, are making it harder for cases to reach or succeed in the courts, according to UNEP.

The agency's Executive Director, Klaus Toepfer, emphasized the need for an international approach to the problem. "This is an issue affecting billions of people who are effectively being denied their rights and one of not only national but regional and global concern," he said. "We are increasingly aware that what happens in one part of the world can impact another part of the globe - be it toxic pollutants from Asia, Europe and North America contaminating the Arctic or the greenhouse gases of the industrialized regions triggering droughts or the melting of glaciers in the less industrialized ones."

Justice Arthur Chaskalson, Chief Justice of South Africa, who co-hosted the Symposium, said the Principles marked a milestone achievement in the effort to achieve sustainability. "Our declaration and proposed programme of work are, I believe, a crucial development in the quest to deliver development that respects people and that respects the planet for current and future generations and for all living things," he said.