O meio ambiente nos tribunais internacionais: diálogo de jurisdições e unidade do sistema jurídico

Abstract

As from the end of the Cold War and the establishment of a New World Order, the international relations were marked by the phenomenon of the normative expansion of international law, characterized by the proliferation of international judicial bodies. In the 1990s alone, we can point out the creation of dozens of international courts, in the most various areas, such as: human rights courts, economic integration courts, commercial courts or criminal courts. This process, which Cançado Trindade perceives as the continuous pursuit of the ideal of international justice, is regarded less optimistically by other jurists, such as by the members of the UN International Law Commission who, in their 2006 report, pointed out the risk of the development of autonomous international regimes with diverging interpretation of law. For this reason, other Brazilian jurists, such as Roberto Luiz Silva recognizes, among the fundamental problems of the study of the international courts: whether or not there are common procedural principles among different courts; what are the main differences between courts and international dispute settlement systems; and if the increasing creation and practice of international courts would result in the undesirable fragmentation of international law or whether there is indeed a necessary and healthy specialization. Based on this approach, we have chosen as our object of study in this masters thesis the analysis of relevant environmental law cases before international courts. Through a study of the case law and the precedents of several international courts, we will try to answer the following question: if indeed we can verify the fragmentation and the lack of coherence of international regimes regarding environmental protection, or if we can still uphold the systemic unity of international environmental law. As a background for our analysis, we will adopt the theory of judicial dialogues, which can be understood as the existing methodological and empirical proposals for the search for unity and coherence within the international legal system and among the different international judicial bodies. We will conclude, as our main proposal, that despite the specialization of the rules and principles of each international regime, it is still possible to assert the existence of a general normative body of international environmental law, which could be applied undistinguished by every international court.