Oxford Commentary on the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development

Oxford University Press has published the Oxford Commentary on the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development edited by Jorge E. Viñuales.

The international community has long grappled with the issue of protecting the environment while encouraging social and economic development, often with limited results. The 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development was an emphatic attempt to address this issue, setting down twenty-seven key principles for the international community to follow.

This book provides the first comprehensive examination of these principles and their subsequent implementation. It investigates the origins and rationale of these principles, the main insights arising from the travaux préparatoires, and their scopes and dimensions, clarifying the legal effects of each principle, particularly as regards its normative impact on subsequent treaties and soft law instruments as well as its jurisprudential relevance.

Written by some of the most distinguished environmental lawyers around the world, the chapters of this volume aim to give the principles enshrined in the Rio Declaration, and through them international environmental law, greater purchase in the practice of international law.

For more information about this book, please refer to the OUP website. For information about other publications by Professor Viñuales, see his Faculty Profile.

This book is available to purchase from Heffers: