This piece is based on my experience as Chair and member of the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee. Here I highlight the quasi-judicial facets of the Committee and the essential elements of law, integrity, due process, dialogue, and trust that underpin its work. I also reflect on the increasing caseload of the Committee, and the Committee's relevance, outcome and impact, arguing that the Committee has delivered on promoting compliance by upholding integrity, ensuring due process and high quality in the reviews of non-compliance and follow-ups, and in engaging in dialogues with parties and non-state actors. My main concern, however, is that, due to the great number of cases, and the limited resources to manage its caseload, the Committee has not been able to live up to the message of the Convention of providing timely legal reviews. Importantly, despite its non-judicial character, the exercise of the Committee is governed by international law, and its findings of non-compliance, through the endorsements of the Meetings of the Parties, have significant legal effect for the interpretation of the Convention. The Committee, in short, is not as weak as I anticipated in 1998 when the Aarhus Convention was adopted.

The Anthropocene signifies the start of a no-analogue trajectory of the Earth system that is fundamentally different from the Holocene. This new trajectory is characterized by rising risks of triggering irreversible and unmanageable shifts in Earth system functioning. We urgently need a new global approach to safeguard critical Earth system regulating functions more effectively and comprehensively. The global commons framework is the closest example of an existing approach with the aim of governing biophysical systems on Earth upon which the world collectively depends. Derived during stable Holocene conditions, the global commons framework must now evolve in the light of new Anthropocene dynamics. This requires a fundamental shift from a focus only on governing shared resources beyond national jurisdiction, to one that secures critical functions of the Earth system irrespective of national boundaries. We propose a new framework—the planetary commons—which differs from the global commons framework by including not only globally shared geographic regions but also critical biophysical systems that regulate the resilience and state, and therefore livability, on Earth. The new planetary commons should articulate and create comprehensive stewardship obligations through Earth system governance aimed at restoring and strengthening planetary resilience and justice. 

Africa is one of three regions where international law provides for participatory rights in environmental matters through a combination of environmental treaties and human rights regimes. Compared to the legal frameworks of Europe and Latin America, the African treaty regimes are much less detailed on what the rights to access to information, public participation, and access to justice in environmental matters imply. The African Commission and Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights confirm that the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights bestow participatory rights in environmental matters to individuals and peoples, but the jurisprudence is surprisingly limited and does not clarify what these rights amount to. While the revised African Convention on the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (Maputo Convention) affirms the rights to access to information, public participation, and access to justice in environmental contexts, it has no effective institutional backing, and appears as a “sleeping treaty.” For the participatory rights in the African Charter and Maputo Convention to be powerful tools to protect the environment and not “sleeping rights,” they must be invoked, claimed, and enforced in practice.

The 1972 UN Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) was ahead of its time in asserting that 'Man has the fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being'. Fifty years later, at Stockholm+50, the human rights approach to environment protection has been significantly consolidated in international law and governance. The article describes and reflects on these developments from the 1972 Stockholm Conference to the 2022 Stockholm Meeting. The consolidation of the human rights approach to environment protection results from normative advances at regional and global scales, further world summits on environment and sustainable development, international treaty-making to protect the environment and human rights, international policy documents and declarations, and remarkable jurisprudential developments. In parallel, fundamental rights relating to the environment have also been recognised in numerous national constitutions and laws. While the human rights approach is not a panacea to resolve all environmental concerns, and to ascertain due concerns for non-human species and interests that are not directly linked to human well-being, it is a key to ensure that no one is left behind in the pursuit for sustainable development and prosperity.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Agenda 2030, and international law interact in multifaceted and complex ways. On the one hand, neither Agenda 2030 nor the SDGs fundamentally question the role of the international economic system, which is entrenched in international law and supportive of activities that do not necessarily further sustainable development. On the other hand, Agenda 2030 aims to transform our world, by evoking a bold cosmopolitan understanding of sustainable development, so that no one is left behind. This cosmopolitan understanding of sustainable development should inspire the application and development of international law, if indeed no one is to be left behind. International law offers ample opportunities for implementing such an approach to sustainable development.

Planetary and legal boundaries can only be effective if they are observed, respected and complied with. In Chapter 10, Jonas Ebbesson addresses the critical issue of compliance with planetary boundaries in international law. He shows that although the planetary boundaries have no formal status in international law, they are legally relevant. Therefore, if they obtained a more robust status in international law, though planetary boundaries would not per se create legal standards, and it would still be problematic to hold States’ performance or compliance directly against them; they would amount to objectives to be achieved and operationalised through other norms, whether rules set out in treaty law with examinable criteria for compliance, or principles of customary law. Alternatively, the planetary boundaries could influence legal concepts, principles and obligations more subtly through jurisprudence and doctrine. The chapter shows that compliance with international environmental law involves a broad range of considerations, including practical reasons for failure to comply, the legal implications of non-compliance, the institutional procedures for compliance control, and the effectiveness of compliance reviews. The main concern in this respect is whether the planetary boundaries as such can be complied with in the first place, and if not, how can compliance in relation to planetary boundaries be meaningfully examined in legal terms?