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20 - The League for Nature

Environmental Law in the League of Nations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2025

By
Omer Aloni  and
Anna-Katharina Wöbse
General editor
Randall Lesaffer
Edited by
Robert Kolb  and
Momchil Milanov
Randall Lesaffer
Affiliation:
KU Leuven and Tilburg University
Robert Kolb
Affiliation:
Université de Genève
Momchil Milanov
Affiliation:
International Court of Justice
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Summary

In the history of international environmental law, the 1920s and 1930s and the role of the League of Nations have been neglected so far.

The chapter explores they ways the League, as one of the first institutions of its kind, started to discuss nature protection. It reveals the dilemmas of environmental and industrial–economic interest of a world that strove to overcome the aftermath of the Great War. Furthermore, the authors study the political, legal and institutional motivations that play a role in the discussions. Pressing problems – overfishing, whaling, destruction of wildlife, pollution of the coasts and seas – were brought to the attention of the League. The chapter analyses the League’s role in drafting the first conventions aiming at regulating the use of the global commons and setting the stage for future environmental governance.

Moreover, the chapter sheds light on the unique role played by transnational organizations, NGOs, civil society groups and non-state actors in campaigns and efforts for the protection of nature and the environment, and for the preservation of natural resources in a fast-changing world.

Keywords

interwar environmental lawglobal commonsPaul Sarasinwhaling regulationoil pollutiondeforestationrural hygiene
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of International Law , pp. 650 - 685
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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References

Further Reading

Aloni, Omer, The League of Nations and the Protection of the Environment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2021).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birnie, Patricia, Boyle, Alan and Redgwell, Catherine (eds.), International Law and the Environment (3rd edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2009).Google Scholar
Cioc, Mark, The Game of Conservation. International Treaties to Protect the World’s Migratory Animals (Athens: Ohio University Press 2009).Google Scholar
de Bont, Raf, Nature’s Diplomats. Science, Internationalism and Preservation (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press 2021).Google Scholar
Dorsey, Kurkpatrick, Whales and Nations. Environmental Diplomacy on the High Seas (Seattle: University of Washington Press 2014).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Juda, Lawrence, International Law and Ocean Use Management. The Evolution of Ocean Governance (London: Routledge 1996).Google Scholar
Kaiser, Wolfram, and Meyer, Jan-Henrik (eds.), International Organizations and Environmental Protection. Conservation and Globalization in the Twentieth Century (New York: Berghahn 2017).Google Scholar
McCormick, John, Reclaiming Paradise. The Global Environmental Movement (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press 1991).Google Scholar
McNeill, J.R., Something New under the Sun. An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (New York: W.W. Norton 2000).Google Scholar
Pedersen, Susan, ‘Back to the League of Nations’, American Historical Review, 112 (2007) 1091–1117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Röhr, Isabella, and Rehling, Andrea (eds.), Global Commons im 20. Jahrhundert. Entwürfe für eine globale Welt (European History Yearbook, vol. 15, Munich: De Gruyter 2014).Google Scholar
Sackel, Johanna, and Wöbse, Anna-Katharina, ‘Networks’ in Torma, Franziska (ed.), A Cultural History of the Sea in the Global Age, 1920–2000+ (New York: Bloomsbury Press 2021) 71–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sands, Philippe, Principles of International Environmental Law (4th edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2018).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schrijver, Nico, Development without Destruction. The UN and Global Resource Management (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2010).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sluga, Glenda, and Patricia, Clavin (eds.), Internationalisms. A Twentieth-Century History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2017).Google Scholar
Speth, James Gustave, and Haas, Peter M., Global Environmental Governance (Washington, DC: Island Press 2006).Google Scholar
Wöbse, Anna-Katharina, ‘Oil on troubled water? Environmental diplomacy in the League of Nations’, Diplomatic History, 32 (2008) 519–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wöbse, Anna-Katharina, Weltnaturschutz. Umweltdiplomatie in Völkerbund und Vereinten Nationen, 1920–1950 (Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus Verlag 2012).Google Scholar

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