EKOLOGINĖS PROBLEMOS TARPTAUTINĖS POLITIKOS DIMENSIJOJE
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS WITHIN THE DIMENSION OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

Summary/Abstract: As the world's population is constantly growing, economics is being developed and, thus, expanding, the number and the importance of global environmental problems is inevitably increasing. There fore, international community and politicians tend to pay more attention to the preservation and protection of the environment. The tendencies of thoroughly increasing harm to the environment were noticed in the 19th century, after the industrial revolution. In the early periods most of the local environmental problems could be solved by International Law but since 20th century environmental problems have spread at regional and global level. The second half of the 20th century is described as the period of global transformation by many authors, disbalance between environmental and economic growth, a period of fast growing population and the gap between the poor and the rich part of the world. Improving economic conditions and the growth of material wealth in industrial countries can not balance or compensate environmental harm which has become global since the mid 20th century. Environmental problems and the necessity for their solution by team work should be analyzed in the perspective of global processes (to be more precise - referring to the approach of transformationalists as it explains the formation and effects of agreements, norms, institutions, and other globally applicable means to solve environmental problems the best). Traditional International Law is based on the independence of the territories of nation states. The legal status of nation state can be described by three fundamental principles: sovereignty norm, independence and equality, although currently the acknowledgement of much wider common interest in preserving healthy environment is spreading among the countries. This acknowledgment consequently leads to the invention of new norms and rules, which extend the principles mentioned above. As the influence of nation state sovereignty is descending, countries are forced to obey the new norms and rules and to limit their actions for the sake of all humanity and mankind. Taking into consideration the increasing number of current global ecological problems, nation states are not capable to control the phenomena which extend their territories any longer. Thus, these problems must be solved on the international scale, in cooperation of various institutions, including all interested, even independent non state actors. In the second part of this article the most essential documents regulating environmental problems are reviewed and compared as the results of International Environmental Politics – United Nations Stockholm Declaration on Human Environment, World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Commission) Report on Our Common Future, Agenda 21, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and Kyoto Protocol. These documents institutionalized countries' initiatives to solve ecological problems on the internationa

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