Editorial

• Published date: 01 April 2016
• Date: 01 April 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/reel.12156
• Author: Harro Asselt

Editorial

The year 2015 will likely go down in history as the year

in which the international community showed that multi-

lateral environmental cooperation can still lead to

concrete results. The most eye-catching outcomes were

undoubtedly the adoption of the Paris Agreement on

climate change (which will be discussed in detail in the

following issue of RECIEL) in December 2015, as well

as the agreement on the post-2015 sustainable develop-

ment agenda, which includes a set of 17 Sustainable

Development Goals (SDGs) in September. In addition,

agreement was reached on the Sendai Framework for

Disaster Risk Reduction (2015–2030) in March, and

the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, resulting from the

Financing for Development conference in July.

Clearly, the agreements reached in 2015 will merely be

paper tigers if they are not accompanied by laws, poli-

cies and other actions by governments and nongovern-

mental actors to achieve the goals and objectives laid

down in them. Moreover, the new agreements will not

operate in a vacuum, and will need to be embedded in

the existing and ever-changing system of international

environmental governance. These issues are at the heart

of the contributions to this issue of RECIEL, which

focuses on the post-2015 sustainable development

agenda adopted last year and its relationship to the

broader corpus of international environmental law.

The issue starts with an analysis by Pamela Chasek and

colleagues on the negotiation process leading up to the

agreement in August 2015. As close observers of the

negotiations, Chasek et al. are well placed to highlight

the differences between the consultations that led to the

formulation of the SDGs and the negotiations leading to

the post-2015 development agenda in a broader sense.

Whereas the SDGs were the result of an open-ended

process involving a wide array of stakeholders, the f‌inal

part of the negotiations on the post-2015 development

agenda took place in the form of traditional intergov-

ernmental bargaining. The authors further show that it

was crucial for the negotiations to tackle two challenges

characterizing international environmental coopera-

tion, namely universal participation and disagreement

over the interpretation of common but differentiated

responsibilities (CBDR). Chasek et al. draw attention to

how the Open Working Group on the SDGs was estab-

lished in a way that kept the number of States at the

table manageable while at the same time ensuring that

no State felt excluded, thus overcoming one of the com-

mon obstacles to consensus. While questions related to

CBDR were also resolved for the time being, the authors

note that these questions will likely re-emerge in the

implementation phase.

The second article, by Rakhyun Kim, offers an in-depth

discussion of the relationship between the SDGs and

international (environmental) law. Kim argues that the

SDGs are a subset of the international commitments

taken on by governments, and are grounded in these

existing commitments. He next explores how the SDGs

could help international organizations and other bodies

to ‘orchestrate’action in relation to a particular goal or

set of goals, concluding that this potential is limited as

the SDGs are hindered by the absence of a unifying,

long-term vision for the period beyond 2030. Kim

suggests that international law offers some means to

reconcile competing objectives, but he concludes that a

long-term vision in which the boundaries of the Earth’s

life-support systems are respected would be needed to

realize the full potential of the SDGs.

The relationship between the SDGs and international

environmental law is also discussed in the next contri-

bution by Birgit Lode, Phillip Sch€

onberger and Patrick

Toussaint. Lode and colleagues examine the SDGs in

light of international law on air pollution. They start by

examining how air pollution features as a cross-cutting

issue in the SDGs, and explore how air quality-related

indicators are emerging in the ongoing development of

global indicators for the SDGs. They next discuss how

air pollution is addressed by international law, paying

attention to the ongoing work in the International Law

Commission to identify rules and principles applicable

to the protection of the atmosphere, relevant principles

of international environmental law and specif‌ic regional

treaties on air pollution. Lode and colleagues present an

optimistic perspective, suggesting that the SDGs com-

plement the existing international legal framework by

expanding the scope of protection, by offering a soft law

instrument to complement existing hard law and by

providing for a proactive rather than a reactive response

to the problem of air pollution.

The next contribution by Otto Spijkers also examines

the SDGs in light of existing international law, focusing

in this case on international water law. Spijkers argues

that the SDGs can facilitate the further ‘greening’of

international water law, drawing particular attention to

(i) an evolving interpretation of the principle of equi-

table and reasonable utilization of shared watercourses,

the no-harm rule and the duty of cooperation; (ii) the

ecosystems approach; and (iii) enhanced public partici-

pation in decision making related to the utilization of

international watercourses.

The subsequent article, by Marcos Orellana, focuses on

the cross-cutting issue of governance. For Orellana, it is

ª2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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RECIEL 25 (1) 2016. ISSN 2050-0386 DOI: 10.1111/reel.12156

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