Page 66 - Çevre Şehir İklim İngilizce - Sayı 3

Sustainable Development in International Environmental Law

2. Principle of Sustainable Development in International Law

2.1. Sustainable Development in Non-Binding International
Legal Documents
The flexible legal studies of the United Nations have been the basis for
the emergence and development of the concept of sustainable development.
Though flexible legal documents do not contain binding rules, they play an
important role in international law and sometimes appear as the only option
for the possible revisions on the subject.
Other actors of international law prefer non-binding documents for
different reasons. Flexible legal documents feature as the more suitable
way that allow including the international organisations in the process easily,
adopting and amending them relatively easier due to their non-binding
structure; revising the issue if the subject of the legal dispute has not yet been
sufficiently clarified or a consensus has not yet reached (Skalar 2015:66). Thus,
in the primary examples of flexible law, the actors of international law have
two options at hand: inability of making revisions or making revisions with
flexible legal documents (Skalar 2015:67).
Taking into account the progress achieved with flexible legal documents
related to sustainable development, it is observed that flexible legal
documents related to sustainable development play a major role in making
the subject more involved in doctrine, increasing international agreements
and judicial decisions regarding the subject (Skalar 2015:68).
2.2. Sustainable Development in International Agreements
Following the foundation of the United Nations, the number of international
agreements referring to sustainable development started to increase.
International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling dated 1946 and its
Supplementary Protocol, and The Convention of Fishing and Conservation
of the Living Resources of the High Seas dated 1958, and the United Nations
Conventions on the Law of the Sea dated 1982 are among the major ones.
Although these agreements address the protection of natural resources and
the environment and the interests of future generations, they have basically
emerged for economic purposes (Skalar 2015:68).
Sustainable development concept, for the first time, appeared by this
name in the ASEAN Agreement on the Conservation of Nature and Natural
Resources of 1985. Immediately after the ASEAN Agreement, “sustainable
resource management” was mentioned in the Preamble of the Convention for
the Protection of Natural Resources and Environment in the South Pacific dated
1986. Sustainable development had started to be addressed in the international
agreements in the eighties, however, Brundtland Report dated 1987 was the first

Year 2 / Issue 3 / January 2023 51