Synopsis on: 1. 27 RIO Principles 2. Conservation Principles and Theories a.

Carrying Capacity In population ecology, the carrying capacity is the population size at which the population growth rate equals zero. Population size is constrained by food availability, competition with other species, and interactions with predators and diseases. When the population size is smaller than the carrying capacity, the population growth rate is positive so populations increase in size and when population size is larger than the carrying capacity, the population growth rate is negative so that populations decrease in size. Eventually, these populations will either increase or decrease in size until the population size equals the carrying capacity at which time the growth of the population will stop. The carrying capacity represents a stable equilibrium of population size. Populations are expected to reach a carrying capacity (rather than continuing to grow exponentially) because birth rates and death rates are density dependent (i.e., depend on population size). For example, as population sizes increase the population birth rates (the number of births/individual/time) will decline, because of increased competition for resources. As population sizes increase the per capita death rates (the number of deaths/individual/time) will increase, because of competition for resources and the influence of predators and disease. The carrying capacity is reached at the population size at which the per capita birth rate equals the per capita death rate. Carrying capacity holds a slightly different meaning when applied to human population growth. When discussing human populations, the carrying capacity often refers to the number of number of individuals that the Earth could hold at different standards of living and levels of resource consumption. Thus, Earths carrying capacity is smaller if everyone is to achieve the average standard of living of people in the United States than if everyone is to achieve the average standard of living of people in developing countries. Carrying capacity has also been difficult to apply to human populations because humans can change environmental constraints through technological innovation. Ecological Footprint Analysis is an attempt to compute human carrying capacity on a global basis.
b. Biophilia

The biophilia hypothesis suggests that there is an instinctive bond between human beings and other living systems. Edward O. Wilson introduced and popularized the hypothesis in his book, Biophilia (1984).[1] He defines biophilia as "the urge to affiliate with other forms of life".[2]

Love of living systems

The term "biophilia" literally means "love of life or living systems." It was first used by Erich Fromm to describe a psychological orientation of being attracted to all that is alive and vital.[3] Wilson uses the term in the same sense when he suggests that biophilia describes "the

connections that human beings subconsciously seek with the rest of life. He proposed the possibility that the deep affiliations humans have with nature are rooted in our biology. Unlike phobias, which are the aversions and fears that people have of things in the natural world, philias are the attractions and positive feelings that people have toward certain habitats, activities, and objects in their natural surroundings. To many people, "nature" means plants as in a park or forest, but the weather and animals are also closely involved. In the book Children and Nature: Psychological, Sociocultural, and Evolutionary Investigations edited by Peter Kahn and Stephen Kellert,[4] the importance of animals, especially those with which a child can develop a nurturing relationship, is emphasised particularly for early and middle childhood. Chapter 7 of the same book reports on the help that animals can provide to children with autistic-spectrum disorders.[5]

Product of biological evolution

Human preferences toward things in nature, while refined through experience and culture, are hypothetically the product of biological evolution. For example, adult mammals (especially humans) are generally attracted to baby mammal faces and find them appealing across species. The large eyes and small features of any young mammal face are far more appealing than those of the mature adults. The biophilia hypothesis suggests that the positive emotional response that adult mammals have toward baby mammals across species helps increase the survival rates of all mammals. Similarly, the hypothesis helps explain why ordinary people care for and sometimes risk their lives to save domestic and wild animals, and keep plants and flowers in and around their homes. In other words, our natural love for life helps sustain life. Very often, flowers also indicate later potential for food. Most of the fruits start their development as flowers. For our ancestors, it has been crucial to spot, detect and remember the plants that later will provide nutrition. It is also well known, that people remember best the things that include some type of feelings. This seems to work both ways. The things that are crucial to survive, seems to have developed genetic memorymark. Genetic memorymarks are also known as instincts.

Development
The hypothesis has since been developed as part of theories of evolutionary psychology in the book The Biophilia Hypothesis edited by Stephen R. Kellert and Edward O. Wilson[6] and by Lynn Margulis. Also, Stephen Kellert's work seeks to determine common human responses to perceptions of, and ideas about, plants and animals, and to explain them in terms of the conditions of human evolution.
EXCERPTS FROM THE BOOK: BIOPHILIA HYPOTHESIS The Biophilia Hypothesis edited by Stephen R. Kellert and Edward O. Wilson (Island Press)

excerpts from David Orr:

(on biophilia): "E O Wilson suggests a deeper sort of attachment that goes beyond the particularities of habitat. We are, he argues, a biological species who will find little ultimate meaning apart from the remainder of life. We are bound to living things by what Wilson describes as an innate urge to affiliate which begins in early childhood and cascades into cultural and social patterns. "If natural diversity is the wellspring of human intelligence, then the systematic destruction inherent in contemporary technology and economics is a war against the very sources of mind . . . It is impossible to unravel natural diversity without undermining human intelligence as well. "If you study life deeply, its profundity will seize you suddenly with dizziness . . . "Let a man once begin to think about the mystery of his life and the links which connect him with the life that fills the world, and he cannot but bring to bear upon his own life and all other life that comes within his reach, the principle of Reverance for Life." A. Schweitzer Orr proposes: The recovery of childhood we will not enter this kingdom of sustainability until we allow our children the kind of childhood in which Biophilia can put down roots. Recovering a sense of place Call it bioregionalism, or becoming native to our places, either way it means deciding to relearn the arts that Jacquetta Hawkes once described as "a patient and increasingly skillfull lovemaking that persuades the land to flourish". Education in Biophilia Upward mobility has come to mean putting as much distance as possible between the apogee of one's career trajectory and one's roots. We should worry a good bit less about whether our progeny will be able to compete as a "world class work force", and a great deal more about whether they will know how to live sustainably on the earth. A New Covenant with Animals Paul Shepherd is right, to recognise animals and wildness is to decide to admit deeper layers of consciousness into the sunlight of full consciousness again. The Economics of Biophilia The Biophilia Revolution will require national and global decisions that will permit lifecentredness to flourish at a local scale. Biophilia and Patriotism Patriotism, the name we give to the love of one's country must be redefined to include those

things which contribute to the real health, beauty and ecological stability of our homeplaces and to exclude those which do not. Patriotism as Biophilia requires that we decide to rejoin the idea of love of one's country to how well one uses the country. To destroy forest, soils, natural beauty and wildlife in order to swell the gross national product or to provide short term and often spurious jobs, is not patriotism but greed. Real patriotism demands that we weave the competent, patient and disciplined love of our land into our political life and our political institutions. No one has expressed this idea more clearly than the former Czech President, Vaclav Havel, "We must draw our standards from the natural world. We must honour with the humility of the wise the bounds of that natural world and the mystery which lies beyond them, admitting that there is something in the order of being which evidently exceeds all our competence." excerpted from David Orr, "Love it or Leave it; the Coming Biophilia Revolution"

Edward O.Wilson: "The great philosophical divide in moral reasoning about the remainder of life is whether or not other species have an innate right to exist..... Wilson proposes: Biodiversity is the creation "Biodiversity is the most information-rich part of the known universe. More organisation and complexity exists in a handful of soil than on the surfaces of all the other planets combined. Other species are our kin. "Biodiversity of a country is part of its national inheritance - the product of the deep history of the territory extending long back before the coming of man. Biodiversity is the frontier of the future "Humanity needs a vision of an expanding and unending future. This spiritual craving cannot be satisfied by the colonisation of space. The other planets are inhospitable and immensely expensive to reach. The nearest stars are so far away that voyagers would need thousands of years just to report back. The true frontier for humanity is life on earth, its exploration and the transport of knowledge about it into science, art and practical affairs. Again, the qualities of life that validate the proposition are: 90% or more of species of plants, animals and micro organisms, lack even so much as a scientific name; each of the species is immensely old by human standards and has been wonderfully moulded to its environment. Life around us exceeds in complexity and beauty anything else humanity is ever likely to encounter. "The manifold ways by which human beings are tied to the remainder of life are very poorly understood, crying for new scientific enquiry and a boldness of aesthetic interpretation. excerpted from Edward Wilson, "Biophilia and the Conservation Ethic"

Dorian Sagan and Lynn Margulis: "All life on earth is a unified spatiotemporal system with no clear-cut boundaries. Encouraging our biophilia, preserving blocks of biodiversity before they are converted to concrete skyscrapers and asphalt parking lots, is a way of enhancing the possibility that human beings will persist into the future. This future may be indefinite, as some few species do not become extinct but "scale back" and become symbiogenically attenuated and reintergrated into new forms of life and patterns of living organization. If we consider, for example, the ancestral oxygen-respirers that evolved into the mitochondria of all plants, animals, and fungi, we would have to say that this mitochondrial "species", codependent as it is, has resisted extinction, surviving and spreading (and still going strong) in multifarious forms for some 2,000 million years. Humanity seems to have been presented with an opportunity, rare in evolution, to do likewise. By allying ourselves more closely with once distant life-forms, by affiliating ourselves biophyletically, not only with the plants and animals whose ongoing demise weighs so heavily at present on our memory, but also with the waste-recycling, air producing, and water-purifying microbes we as yet take largely for granted, we may be able to aid in the flowering of earth life into the astronomically voluminous reaches of space." excerpts from Dorian Sagan and Lynn Margulis, "God, Gaia, and Biophilia" The Biophilia Hypothesis edited by Stephen R. Kellert and Edward O. Wilson (Island Press)
c. Doctrine of Hard Look
The "Hard Look" Doctrine - A Lay Explanation The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) states that all Federal agencies "to the fullest extent possible" must provide a detailed environmental impact statement (EIS) (42 U.S.C. 4332). Neither Congress nor the courts have indicated precisely how much detail an EIS must contain. However, courts consistently have held that, at a minimum, NEPA imposes a duty on Federal agencies to take a "hard look at environmental consequences" (Natural Resources Defense Council v. Morton, 458 F.2d 827, 838 (D.C. Cir., 1972). Hence, courts have carefully checked EIS's for completeness of information and detail, soundness of analysis, thorough discussion of alternatives, and disclosure of sources. Some court decisions have ordered agencies to prepare new statements if these criteria are not met. The courts' interpretation is that the agency has the "requirement of a substantial, good faith effort at studying, analyzing, and expressing the environmental issues in the EIS and the decisionmaking process, and a recognition that a rule of reason must prevail because an EIS which fully explores every relevant environmental detail could never be drafted" (Natural Resources Defense Council v. Morton, 458 F.2d 827, 838 (D.C. Cir., 1972)). If the EIS provides good faith analysis and sufficient information to allow a firm basis for weighing the risks and benefits of a proposed action, the court will find the EIS to be sufficient (County of Suffolk v. Secretary of the Interior, 562 F.2d 1368 (2nd Cir. 1977), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 1064 (1978)).

d. Theory of Standstill/ Non-Regression

Would it appear that we have entered an era of law that refuses established rights in the name of sovereignty of laws and Parliaments what a law can do can be undone by another law? Is this not in contradiction with the rights of future generations, the paradigm of sustainable development proclaimed by States in Rio in 1992 and reaffirmed in Rio twenty years later? 1 Quote from Pompidous Speech on the Environment, given at the Chicago French Alliance on February (...) 2The environment is a value-policy and an ethic (or a moral of the environment, as said by French President Pompidou in 19701) that, because of its scope, reflects a permanent quest for improved human and animal well-being in the name of permanent social progress. Environmental policies, if they reflect progress, should ban any regression. 3Since the 1972 UN Conference in Stockholm, the main purpose of environmental policies and of their indispensable implementation instrument environmental law, both national and international is to contribute to abating pollution and preserving biological diversity. 4At a time when environmental law is enshrined in numerous constitutions as a new human right, it is paradoxically threatened in its substance. This could lead to a U-turn and a real regression that would be detrimental to the future of humankind and a threat to intergenerational environmental fairness. 5Should not environmental law be included in the category of eternal legal rules, and therefore be non-repealable in the name of the common interest of humanity? 6Several threats exist that could curb environmental law. They are: political: the often demagogic will to simplify laws leads to deregulation, indeed to the repeal of environmental legislation, in view of the growing number of national and international legal environmental standards;

economic: the global economic crisis is conducive to speeches calling for fewer legal environmental obligations, some people considering that they hinder development and poverty reduction;

psychological: the huge scope of environmental standards means they are complex and difficult to understand for non-specialists, which encourages calls for less restrictive environmental laws.

7Regression takes many forms. It is seldom explicit, since governments do not have the courage to announce backtracking in environmental protection officially for fear of an unfavourable public response from environmental and consumer NGOs. Internationally, it can take the form of refusing to adhere to universal environmental treaties, boycotting their implementation, or even denouncing them. This happened for the first time in the field of international environmental law when Canada decided to denounce the Kyoto Protocol during the Conference of the Parties to the Climate Change Convention in Durban in December 2011.

In EU environmental legislation, regression is diffuse and appears when certain directives are revised.

National environmental legislation is subject to increasing and often insidious regression: changing procedures so as to curtail the rights of the public on the pretext of simplification;

repealing or amending environmental rules, thus reducing means of protection or rendering them ineffective. Exceptionally, such regressions may be validated by a judge: for example, on the 27th April 2012, the Panama Supreme Court ruled for a provisional suspension of the Protected Area status given to the mangroves of Panama Bay.

8Faced with this diversity of forms of regression, environmental lawyers must respond firmly and rely on implacable legal arguments. Public opinion, once alerted, would not tolerate reversals in environmental and therefore health protection. 2 Evaluation-orientation de la COoperation Scientifique franaise dans le Cne Sud [Assessment-dire (...) 3 Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation of Argentina. 9A group of legal experts was created in August 2010 within the IUCN Environmental Law Commission. It aims at pooling relevant universal legal experience and arguments in order to put an end to threats of environmental law backsliding in liaison with a FrancoArgentinean research group of the ECOS-Sud2/MINCyT3 cooperation programme between

the University of Limoges (France) and the National University of the Littoral in Santa Fe (Argentina). 4 European Parliament (2011, 29 September). Resolution on on developing a common EU position ahead of (...) 10Legal arguments must indeed be deployed so as to create a new principle of environmental law, in addition to those already recognised since Rio 1992 (viz prevention, precaution, polluter pays and public participation principles). This new principle is already recognised in a small number of national constitutions and legislations. Some courts refer to it. Legal doctrine has started to show an interest, in particular among Brazilian lawyers. Non-regression was for the first time the subject of proposals and discussion at European and international level, first in the European Parliament in September 20114 (Resolution 29 September 2011, par. 97), then in New York and Rio in the framework of Rio+20 in 2012. 11The legal arguments are based on: 5 Paine, T. (1791). Rights of Man: Answer to Mr Burkes Attack on the French Revolution. London: Jord (...) 6 Republic of France,Constitution of the Year 1, Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, 1793, (...) Legal theory and philosophy of law: is it acceptable to depart from the theory of mutability of laws, the very foundation of democratic systems? Classical authors consider laws are necessarily subject to a rule of permanent adaptation that reflects changes in social requirements. Any legal rule must be modifiable or repealable at any time, for it would be morally unthinkable that a generation of men, in any country, be possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the end of time, or of commanding forever how the world shall be governed (Paine, 1792, p.555). It is along the same lines that Article 28 of the draft Human Rights Declaration6 of June 24th 1793 stated: a generation cannot subject future generations to its laws. Apart from the fact that the article was never adopted, the environment and sustainable development compel us today to think differently. The concept of sustainable development now means that the right to life and health of future generations must not be overlooked and measures that would be detrimental to them must not be adopted. Minimizing or repealing rules protecting the environment would result in imposing a more degraded environment on future generations. Therefore, the above-mentioned Article 28 taken literally, combined with the principle of sustainable development, can nowadays be interpreted in the environmental area as speaking in favour of the principle of non-regression, since it prohibits subjecting future generations to a law that would reduce environmental protection.

7 UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), General Comment No.3: The Nature of S (...) 8 UN General Assembly, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 10 December 1948, 217 A (III). Availabl (...) 9 European Convention on Human Rights Act 2003 [Ireland], Number 20 of 2003, 30 June 2003. Available (...) 10 Viz. the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Cove (...) Human rights theory: international law, through the 1966 international covenants, aims for the constant progress of protected rights; it is interpreted as prohibiting regression. Environmental law, now a human right, can benefit from this theory of constant progress applied in particular to social rights. In its General Comment 3 of December 14 1990, the UN Committee for Economic Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) condemns any deliberately retrogressive measures (Para.9)7. The idea that once a human right is recognised it cannot be restrained, destroyed or repealed is shared by all major international instruments on human rights (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, Art. 308; European Convention on Human Rights, 1950, Arts. 17 and 539; Art. 5 of the two 1966 human rights covenants10).

11 UN General Assembly, Report of the UN Conference on Environment and Development,Annex 1: Rio Decla (...) 12 NAAEC [North American Agreement On Environmental Cooperation] (Aug. 1993), USCan.-Mex., US Govt P (...) International environmental law: universal or regional international environmental conventions all aim at improving the environment. The final nature of international environmental law is easily apprehended on reading all international environmental conventions. As specified in the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, they all undertake to conserve, protect and restore the health and integrity of the Earth's ecosystem (Principle 7)11. Aiming at protection means conversely asserting th at any contrary measure is prohibited. A number of conventions state expressly that there can be no reversal: it is forbidden to reduce the level of environmental protection (e.g. North American Agreement On Environmental Cooperation, 199412).

13 European Union, Treaty of Lisbon Amending the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty Establishing (...)

European Union law: the Lisbon treaty (Art.2, para.313) aims at a high level of protection and improvement of the quality of the environment; there can be no derogation from this principle, based on the theory of acquis communautaires.

14 Available from http://pdba.georgetown.edu/Constitutions/Ecuador/english08.html 15 Available from http://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/details.jsp?id=5214 Constitutional law: a number of countries (e.g. Brazil, Portugal, Germany), have eternal provisions (clausula petrea) in their constitutions. They can be interpreted as including human rights to the environment. The 2008 constitution of Ecuador14 recognizes nonregression in the field of the environment, and the 2008 constitution of Bhutan15 declares that 70% of the countrys forests are eternal. Law-makers are sometimes prohibited from reducing or restraining fundamental rights (for instance in Argentina or Spain): it should be possible to apply this limitation to environmental law, which has become a fundamental right, by invoking it in national courts and raising awareness in constitutional doctrine and NGOs.

National environmental law: whereas national texts on the environment all proclaim as imperative reducing damage to the environment, they can, conversely, be interpreted as prohibiting any retrogressive measure.

16 I/A Court H.R., Acevedo Buendia et al. case, Judgment of July 1, 2009, Series C, No. 198, Finally, jurisprudence in the various national, regional and international courts: it is advisable to inform judges and explain to them the existence of the principle of nonregression by publicising the first rulings that refer to this principle (in Hungary, Belgium, Brazil and Spain as well as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, July 1, 200916).

17 Proposition 23, which would have suspended AB 32, the "Global Warming Act of 2006", was on the Nov (...) 12The principle of non-regression was first established by a referendum in California17 on November 2, 2010, when a majority of voters refused to suspend a law on climate change and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions as requested by oil companies. The Swiss popular initiative in late 2011 prohibiting more than 20% of second homes in rural areas can be interpreted as expressing a refusal of increasing landscape and environmental degradation.

18 France Senate. Rio plus 20 : l'mergence d'un nouveau monde [Rio+20: the emergence of a new world. (...) 19 UN [United Nations] (2012, June 19). The Future We Want. Agenda Item 10, Outcome of the Conference, (...) 13The principle of non-regression is thus emerging in states and at an international level. The French Senate, in its contribution to Rio + 20, included the principle among its recommendations18 (report No 545 by L. Rossignol, May 22, 2012). The International Centre of Comparative Environmental Law (CIDCE) made it its main proposal for the Rio + 20 Conference. This resulted in a consensus of the Major Groups in its favour, and in the express proposal by the Group of 77 + China to include it in the final document The Future We Want (UN, 2012, June 1919) during informal negotiations on May 4 and 31, 2012 in New York. 20 Viz. economic prosperity, environmental quality and social equity. 14In the face of opposition from the USA, Japan and Canada, and the indecision of the EU and Switzerland, Brazil, in its role as president of the conference, imposed the withdrawal of the expression Principle of non-regression. However, the principle was reintroduced with different wording in the final text adopted on the 22nd June, 2012. According to paragraph 20, after having noted some backtracking in the integration of the three dimensions of sustainable development20, it is written: In this regard, it is critical that we do not backtrack from our commitment to the earth summit. Thus, the term nonregression was replaced by do not backtrack, which carries the same meaning. The statement applies to all the decisions taken at Rio in 1992, that is to say, the three conventions, the Rio declaration, Agenda 21 and the forests declaration. The reaffirmation to implement in full the Rio 1992 commitments reinforces the idea of non-regression and contributes to the formation of a judicial obligation, following the custom of international law. The IUCN should adopt a recommendation in this direction on the occasion of the WCC in Jeju in September, 2012. 15However, it is certain that the principle of non-regression allows for exceptions, so long as they do not contravene fundamental environmental policy objectives. For instance, under CITES on the international trade in endangered species of wild flora and fauna, species that are no longer endangered could be removed from the list without a regression in the level of protection. The ban on a particular pollutant could be lifted when it is demonstrated that it no longer poses a health hazard. Non-regression does not prohibit repealing or amending existing texts. There is no question of freezing environmental law. On the contrary, with the scientific progress that will result from the implementation of the precautionary principle, either it will be strengthened to deal with new threats to health and nature, or it will be eased if a source of pollution that required protection is demonstrated to be innocuous. The main thing is that the new rule continues

to contribute to environmental and health protection, and does not worsen pollution or loss of biodiversity. In order, therefore, to assess whether a new rule or changes to an old one are retrogressive, there must be a special chapter in the impact study of the draft bill or decree demonstrating non-regression on the basis of relevant indicators of the state of the environment, including legal indicators.

3. Earth Charter