ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways in which different nations and the international community are adjusting their rules and sanctions, laws and enforcement. The international law that guides relations among nations has paid little heed to environmental protection. The more an environmental harm affects the welfare of the community, the more likely it is that the community will understand legal-protection obligations. Iran sponsored the Convention Concerning the Protection of Wetlands of International Importance in Ramsar, and coincidentally many nations have been adopting wetlands protection laws. In the United States, as in Canada, laws have emerged at both the federal and state levels for natural and cultural preservation. As in the laws of nature conservation, the basic principles include “the legal definition of objectives and goals of protection; the establishment of regimes of protection of the procedure of reserving tracts of land; and the obligations of executive bodies of the State power concerning such tracts".
