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68 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 61 (1992-1993)
The Role of Non-Governmental Organizations in the Development of International Environmental Law

handle is hein.journals/chknt68 and id is 75 raw text is: THE ROLE OF NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAW A. DAN TARLOCK* I. INTRODUCTION: GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTALISM OPENS THE DOOR FOR NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS This Essay explores the role of Non-Governmental Organizations [NGOs] in the establishment and enforcement of global environmental priorities. It examines the deficiencies in classic international law that NGOs are helping to overcome as well as the different roles that NGOs now play in priority setting and the enforcement of international norms. It concludes with the suggestion that as NGOs acquire more political power, we need to develop minimal standards to assess NGO performance. Protection of the global environment from continuing degradation is the most difficult problem facing the international community.1 The most distinctive aspect of global environmental protection is that it is primarily scientifically driven. International environmental standards have been greatly influenced by priorities established by cosmopolitan scientific elites and to a lesser extent by advocates of global social equity.2 For this reason, calls for increased levels of global environmental protec- tion challenge both the ways in which individual countries use natural resources and the distribution of resource use between north and south. These pleas thus challenge the basic assumptions of domestic legal sys- tems as well as those of classic international law and the post-World War II structure of international organizations. * Distinguished Professor of Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law, Illinois Institute of Tech- nology; A.B. 1962, L.L.B. 1965, Stanford University. I would like to thank Ms. Susan Hahn-Reizner, J.D. Chicago-Kent College of Law, 1992, for her research skills in locating a great deal of valuable information about the activities of non-govern- mental organizations (NGOs). 1. See WORLD RESOURCES INSTITUTE, WORLD RESOURCES 1990-91 (1990), for an excellent narrative and quantitative survey of global environmental degradation. Vice President Albert Gore develops this theme in THE EARTH IN THE BALANCE: ECOLOGY AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT (1992). 2. Equity has become a much more pervasive theme in the global environmental debate. WORLD RESOURCES, supra note 1, at 1, observes that [t]he world's environmental dilemma is that the scale on which natural resources are being consumed and wastes are being produced is already immense, yet many poor countries still lack and desperately need the benefits of industrialization and economic development.

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