Differential treatment in international environmental law: A new framework for the realisation of sustainable development

International law has traditionally been premissed on the principle of sovereign equality of states. The growing number of states forming the international community and the rapid development of international law in the latter part of the twentieth century have forced states to reconsider the premisses upon which their relations are based. A first attempt at reforming the international system through the so-called international law of development eventually collapsed in the 1980s. More recently, states have developed new mechanisms to take into account the deficiencies of strict reciprocity in the context of international environmental agreements.;This study posits that there is basis for differential treatment in international law and that it is necessary to address the new challenges facing the international community. Strict reciprocity of obligations and the fiction of sovereign equality are not capable of bringing about satisfactory outcomes either at the international or local levels. The realization of sustainable development in the broadest sense requires changes in the international legal structure. Differential treatment constitutes one such response. The study further argues that while the principle of differential treatment is conceptually promising, current applications are only partly successful because differential mechanisms do not fully take into account the breadth of concerned actors in the field of environmental management. The extension of differential treatment to non-state actors constitutes one of the possible strategies to make differential treatment a more effective tool in the realization of sustainable development at the international and domestic levels. To be successful, the realization of substantive sought through differentiation must encompass substantive equality among persons and not only states.