On September 20, 2017, Professor Maxine Burkett spoke at a conference discussing the Global Pact for the Environment, hosted by the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment. The conference held three panels regarding the Global Pact, which President Macron of France unveiled to the United Nations the day before. The Global Pact for the Environment aims to create a legally binding umbrella text for international environmental law and to establish a universal right to a healthy environment.

Professor Burkett’s panel explored how the Pact fits into the existing international law scheme. Fellow panelist and former principal State Department lawyer on climate change, Professor Sue Biniaz, expressed concern over core principles of the Pact. Although many accepted the Pact as an effective means of environmental protection, Biniaz suggested that the Pact might actually upend current environmental obligations. To be effective, the Pact must address global governance and how government action affects lived experience and the environment.

Burkett also expressed reservations over the Pact’s strength standing alone. Given the urgency of climate change, biodiversity threats, and ocean health, she questioned the Pact’s effectiveness in the near term compared to alternatives. The Pact neither addresses nor changes current international agreements that undermine the environment. Many agreements favor uninhibited growth that is both unsustainable and counter to environmental protection. Burkett proposes “green audits” as a necessary companion to the Pact, if not an alternative. Rather than create a new agreement that might have limited effect, auditing and changing current unsustainable international arrangements would be more effective. As long as environmentally degrading agreements exist unchecked, the Pact will do little toward environmental protection.

The lack of diversity amongst the initial drafters also concerned Burkett. The intentions of the Pact are laudable, and potentially impactful, but involvement from the Global South, and particularly the lowest income countries, is thin thus far. This is troubling because there may be push back from States not involved and many agreements focus too heavily on the Global North. Drafting bodies disregard crucial issues when they are not representative. For example, the Pact explains environmental justice in a few short sentences as a right to go to court over environmental issues. For many countries in the Global South, having a healthy environment is synonymous with combatting environmental racism.  Involving more States in these types of global agreements ensures that issues, like environmental justice, are enshrined more completely in international agreements.