국제환경법상 “공동의 그러나 차별적 책임” (CBDR) 원칙의 형평성 문제에 대한 소고

Abstract

As growing the awareness of the environmental problem, international community is actively responding to the environmental matters as a common concern. Furthermore, through making the international environmental agreements, it tries to impose the legal duties according to CBDR principle on the contracting party countries in order to protect environment. The CBDR principle is considered as a crucial general principle even though its legal status is controversial. The CBDR principle involves two concepts: the common responsibility which is about taking the common responsibility for making the earth's environment worse, and the differentiated responsibility which imposes different duties on contracting parties taking into account the different situations of each countries. In accordance with the CBDR principle, advanced country parties have the responsibilities to reduce green house gas emission as well as to provide financial and technical assistance to developing country parties. On the other hand, developing country parties are excepted from the duties. The legal basis of CBDR principle is on the contribution to the environment deterioration and the capability to respond climate change. It is still controversial whether the legal basis fulfills the fairness and justice in international environment law. Besides, environmental pollution resulted from the economic development of developing countries is getting worse. Under the circumstance, advanced country parties having burdened with the unilateral responsibility raises application problem of differentiated responsibility according to the CBDR principle, which causes the conflict between developed country parties and developing country parties. At this stage of rising conflict between contracting parties, to reconsider the validity of CBDR principle would be helpful to mitigate the conflict among contracting parties as well as to reach an agreement in order to implement the common responsibility more efficiently. Thus, this paper firstly examines the historical development of CBDR principle and its basic concept. Additionally, it analyzes its equality, and discuss the limitations to implement CBDR principle in the international environment agreement.