Legal Advisory Services
Environment and Biodiversity
| The Development
Law Service provides technical assistance to member countries
for the preparation of laws and regulations on the conservation,
management and sustainable use of the natural environment.
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In this context, the
natural environment is broadly understood to mean all renewable natural
resources, namely soil, water, forests, wildlife, fisheries, and genetic
resources, as well as their respective ecosystems and habitats. In
this area, technical assistance includes the legal aspects of preventing
and controlling environmental degradation and pollution, such as soil
erosion, pollution resulting from agricultural activities, desertification
control, marine pollution, etc. It also entails the legal dimensions
of biological diversity conservation, and of protected area and coastal
zone management and development.
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From a formal point of
view, the assistance provided by the Service in this field
may result in the formulation of either global laws dealing with the
environment as a whole, or sectoral laws dealing with a natural resource
in particular. While the latter are more frequent than the former,
in both cases environmental conservation and sustainable development
concerns, principles and functions are consistently taken into account,
in a balanced and integrated manner. Global laws may take the form
of either a codification of all or most of the legal provisions relating
to the environment, or a framework legal instrument laying down the
basic principles and rules for environmental protection and development,
which are further implemented through subsidiary legislation.
In practice, -global laws and
sectoral laws- are sometimes developed as part of a single, gradual
law-making process. For instance, after the adoption of the Guinean
Environmental Act in 1987, sectoral laws and regulations on forests,
wildlife, water and soil were progressively formulated under it,
with assistance from the Service for the preparation of each set
of implementing norms. During this law-making process, it is essential
to ensure that all environment-related legislation and regulations,
be they global or sectoral in scope, are conceived in a coordinated
and consolidated way, so that the complex inter-relations between
the various elements -human and natural alike- of the environment
can be fully taken into consideration.
More generally and as a matter
of principle, environmental and sustainability concerns are systematically
emphasized in the Service's legal advice, in order to provide appropriate
legislative and regulatory tools for the management and conservation
of natural resources on a sustainable basis. In this respect, the
relevant international instruments dealing with the natural environment
are given due attention, in particular those which were adopted
at UNCED in 1992, like the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development,
and the Convention on Biological Diversity.
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