1.4 Historical Development of International Environmental Law

The ladder (the dates well-established): (1) the late-19th-century beginnings — the boundary- waters and fisheries treaties; the 1893 Bering Sea arbitration (the fur seals — the shared- resource conservation's first case); (2) the early-20th century — the Trail Smelter arbitration (1938-41) — the transboundary air pollution's foundational principle (no state may use its territory to cause serious injury to another's — the "you may not poison your neighbour" rule); (3) the 1950s-60s — the Lake Lanoux arbitration (1957) (the shared-water works' notification- and-consultation duty); the environmental-awakening treaties; (4) the Stockholm Declaration 1972 — the field's constitutional moment (the 26 principles; the UNEP's birth); (5) the Rio era 1992 — the UNFCCC, the CBD, the desertification convention, the Rio Declaration (the sustainable development's canonisation; the Agenda 21); (6) the implementation-and-refinement era — the Kyoto (1997) → Paris (2015) line; the Cartagena-and-Nagoya protocols; the SDGs (2015); (7) the current frontier — the climate litigation's global rise; the loss-and-damage; the plastics' treaty negotiations.