energy resources

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONAL ENERGY RESOURCES: WHAT HAS INTERNATIONAL LAW GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Catherine Redgwell*

INTRODUCTION

It is particularly apt to be addressing the sustainable development of energy resources before this august audience. As Professor Omorogbe states in her welcome address, the ILA Nigerian Branch Committee, under the auspices of which this Third Annual Conference is organized, replicates the international committee at national level. Indeed, the topic of “Legal Aspects of Sustainable Development” has been the subject of ILA study since the International Committee on the Legal Aspects of the New International Economic Order reconstituted itself as the International Committee on Legal Aspects of Sustainable Development at the 1992 Cairo ILA Conference.1


* BA (Hons), LLB, MSc, Chichele Professor of Public International Law, Fellow of All Souls College, and Co-Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Sustainable Oceans, University of Oxford, United Kingdom.

1 ILA Report of the Sixty-Fifth Conference (Cairo, 1992), Resolution 12. The Committee was headed by Kamal Hossain (Bangladesh) with Nico Schrijver (Netherlands) as General Rapporteur. Illustrating the complexity of the subject, the Committee immediately established three subcommittees on protection of the environment, good governance and the international economic order, respectively: Report of the Sixty-Sixth Conference (Buenos Aires, 1994) p. 135. Sustainable development was also one of the principles examined by the ILA Committee on the Legal Principles Relating to Climate Change.