Droit international et gouvernance de l’environnement

International law plays a crucial role for environmental governance. Not only is it a core element of international law, but the recognition that the global scale of the environmental emergency requires a global response is no longer a matter for debate. The environment has thus ‘widened the traditional scope of diplomacy’ to the extent that the development of modern international environmental law has been described as one of the most remarkable exercises in international legal production. Yet environmental governance defies the classical parameters of international law. While international law as a system is still primarily based on the need to regulate relations between independent and sovereign States, including their territories, the environment is characterised by its unicity and the interdependence of its elements and naturally transcends both the fiction of borders, of the delimitation of territory, and of the State. This note explores how this dichotomy impacts the conceptual and theoretical dimensions of the relationship of international law to environmental governance as well as its practical aspects.