The role of international law – and international lawyers – in managing environmental problems is understood to be very new. This lecture reveals its deeper history, showing how international law was mobilized to address environmental challenges in the era of the two world wars. In particular, it uncovers the pivotal role of the League of Nations in determining an emergent environmental agenda in the 1920s and 1930s. The lecture shows how many of the global concerns that contemporary commentators decry as novel have in fact a long (hi)story, and thereby reveals a missing link in our current understanding of the roots of our ecological crisis.

Through a series of inter-linked case studies, the history of the League’s environmental dilemmas, campaigns, and initiatives reveals a focused reliance upon international law to solve problems between human development and nature. They included campaigns: to protect endangered species based on a growing concern about their extermination; stop oil pollution of the sea, which threatened the livelihoods of communities and coastal environment in countries such as Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan; fight diseases spread by sanitation failures, and raise public awareness of environmental risks caused by rapid deforestation. The lecture reveals how law and practice evolved, and what the history of this past global order can tell us about the global ecological challenges we face today.

The presentation will be followed by discussion and drinks. All are welcome.