International Regulatory Frameworks

International regulatory frameworks provide “hard law” obligations and rules of treaties and “soft law” standards and guidelines about safe and sustainable state and corporate practices. They are typically derived from normative consensus that arises through interaction among states, market actors, and civil society proponents of a green agenda. These legal regulations—an outcome of interstate negotiations—cover a wide variety of conservation issues. This is because many environmental problems extend across national boundaries and affect the life chances of various species as well as the preservation of land, air, and water on which human livelihood depends. All such efforts at regulatory structures, then, have, at their core, the attempt to not just mitigate the violation against human rights but also enable the enjoyment of human rights.

The key international regulations derive from the normative ideals enshrined in the international law—the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These rights cover civil and political rights as well as social, economic, and cultural rights. Key to both sets [Page 252]of rights is the right to life and the right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being. Obviously these issues strike deeply into the heart of the key concern of the green agenda—sustainable development.

International regulations could be enshrined in the charters of international institutions like the United Nations (UN), the World Bank, and the World Health Organization. They could also become part of bilateral treaties. Typically, the adoption of such regulations tends to be voluntary, and hence not all states necessarily are part of such treaty frameworks. Moreover, the states could sign on to an international treaty regulation, but the treaty still has to be ratified by the domestic governing institutions. This means that many states do not move beyond structural facades to genuine efforts at processes to implement the regulations and ensure just outcomes.

Hence, regulations could be codified into laws within the domestic arena, or they could be left to be auto-accomplished through market and civil society pressures. For example, civil society activism focuses on naming and shaming delinquent actors and their activities. Hence, actors such as Amnesty International or Oxfam copiously document human rights violations by states and businesses and publicly propagate them through various media. These entities have successfully unearthed the problem of “blood diamonds” and associated civil wars related to the extraction of such resources. As citizen watchdogs, they have also recorded toxic environmental pollution activities by international oil and gas companies in resource-rich, but regulation-poor, developing countries.

International institutions like the World Bank, UN Development Programme (UNDP), and International Labour Organization also document state performances on various indicators of justice. For instance, the International Labour Organization's labor standards cover issues of antidiscrimination, antislavery, safe and hygienic working conditions, and minimum wage. The World Bank and UNDP reports cover issues such as gender equity and health. The public records of such data are available in international reports such as the Human Development Report. Hence, indicators like the Human Development Index or the Environmental Performance Index (which assesses a country's commitment to environmental and resource management) become critical in raising awareness of sustainable issues and progress made on that front. The UN's Millennium Development Goals (to be achieved by 2015) also seek to mobilize states in an international partnership to implement concrete plans on the reduction of human travails of burgeoning population, degrading environment, increasing poverty, and so on, and bring about global equity.

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