International Environmental Law: Conceptual Constants and Cognitive Dominants

Abstract

The research is aimed at defining the main concepts of international environmental law which reflect the most urgent environmental problems at different stages of the development of this area of law. Using several cross-disciplinary methods to analyse the texts of three international environmental agreements, the authors aim at proving the hypothesis that the development of international environmental law can be characterized by transformation from specific to universal problems. The authors believe that the problems addressed in a chronologically earlier document are relatively specific, while later documents focus on more general issues. Such change of priorities is supported by the results of linguo-cognitive analysis of the texts under study. Various conceptual constants are typical of different stages of development of international environmental law. The constants found in the documents of different periods of time accumulate to shape the cognitive dominants of the discourse of international environmental law, which makes it possible to trace the evolution of environmental ideas at a global scale.