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St. Thomas Law Review

First Page

85

Document Type

Article

Abstract

The early writers of international law were environmentally literate. Grotius, for example, in his great novel, The Law of War and Peace, prohibited certain potentially advantageous tactics because of their long-term environmental costs. But, the early writers lived in a preindustrial era, where it was reasonable to design a public order based on maximum access and use, and minimum regulation. After all, no matter how many wind driven ships sailed the ocean surface, the ocean would not "wear out." The industrial revolution irrevocably changed that reality. International concern about the protection of the environment began to take political form and vector around the middle of the twentieth century, when the consequences of the intensive use of the environment by an industrial and science based civilization became incontestable. Like the development of international law in other areas, an attempt to formulate some sort of an international regulation with respect to the environment was the result of a perceived necessity for international cooperation to address human needs. This approach, and the legal perspective about the protection of the human environment, has gone through a process of evolution in the last fifty years. An examination of the original concerns behind the development of international environmental law, and the method by which it developed, explains the reasons for the lack of concern for protection of the environmental space of indigenous peoples. This essay discusses the original concerns behind the development of international law, the merger of environmental law with international socio-economic policies, and environmental protection for indigenous peoples.

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