Environmental Rule of Law: Critical to Sustainable Development - Issue Brief

This document explains environmental rule of law as the application of accountable, transparent, and rights-consistent legal frameworks to environmental governance, arguing it is essential to sustainable development. It notes mounting pressures—climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, and resource conflicts—and records that a 2013 UNEP decision first established the term while warning that violations undermine agreed goals and that implementation lags across hundreds of instruments, with significant progress in only 4 of 90 objectives. It calls for stronger access to information, public participation, capacity for courts and enforcement bodies, and removal of barriers to justice.