The Rise of Environmental Law in the Asian Region

In the past three decades, the realm of environmental law in many Western countries, and internationally, has grown from a small baby crying for attention to a full-fledged, articulate adult, participating in a wide variety of international, regional, and national fora concerning the protection of the environment and the management of our natural resources. More recently, in many non-Western countries and especially in Asia, environmental law has begun to enter into adulthood, manifested by significant legislative initiatives, judicial activism and a resulting environmental jurisprudence, and the establishment and growth of environmental and resource management agencies. The growth in the importance of environmental law is closely connected with the realization by the world community in the past few decades that humanity is facing an ecological crisis of unbounded proportions. The catalogue of issues is a familiar one: climate change and expected sea level rise caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions; the depletion of the world's biological diversity; marine, riverine, and terrestrial pollution; over-population by humans and motor vehicles; and over-consumption of natural resources by a growing percentage of the global population. In short, at the local, national, and international level, we are living beyond the ecological carrying capacity of our global and regional environments, and in many countries, beyond the carrying capacity of our local community environments