TOWARDS A M EANINGFUL CONCEPT OF POLLUTION
IN INTERNATIONAL LAW
By
T h e question has been posed by, among others, C. B. Bourne: “ What
are you talking about when you are talking about pollution? What is
pollution? How would you define it if you are going to remove the
concept of damage from it? ” 1 The fact is that “ pollution ” is a
word whose precise meaning in law, particularly international law, is
not easily discerned. It has been used in a wide variety of contexts,
from international conventions to pessimistic speeches about the state
of the environment, to describe different levels and kinds of maninduced 2 changes in the natural world. Within a particular context,
pollution assumes a meaning, either explicitly stated or implicitly
developed, which may bear little resemblance to its usage elsewhere.
While any definition may appear satisfactory for the purpose to which
it is applied, this proliferation of usages has led some publicists to
believe that the term has lost any legal value it might once have had
and should be discarded. Indeed, in many cases, pollution has been
replaced by other words, supposedly more precise. Yet “ pollution ”
is an extremely important concept in the contemporary discussion of
international environmental law and an integral part of many inter
national agreements, including the Stockholm Declaration on the
Human Environment of 1972.3 The problem of what constitutes a
legally significant effect on the environment cannot be solved by the
simple manipulation of labels.
