The Amazon from an International Law Perspective

Beatriz Garcia is a research fellow at the Australian Centre for Climate and Environmental Law at Sydney Law School. She completed her master's degree and Ph.D. at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. She has worked on the Biodiversity and Climate Change Section of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, particularly on projects related to the Amazon region, and has also held positions at government agencies in Brazil and at the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization.

• 1. Introduction; 2. The characteristics of the Amazon; 3. The origins of regional cooperation in the Amazon; 4. The 1978 Amazon Cooperation Treaty; 5. Regional and subregional organizations; 6. Other legal instruments adopted by the Amazon states inter se; 7. Multilateral treaties and global actors in the Amazon; 8. Positive incentives for protecting the Amazon; 9. The legal status of the Amazon: implications for international cooperation; 10. General conclusions.

'This work's outstanding contribution to the broader literature on the Amazon … is its welcome focus on the changing rights and duties of states over time, a subject that has generally received short shrift in studies essentially concerned with the magnitude of the environmental problem and one that has been confined hitherto mainly to the pages of international law journals.' Philip Chrimes, International Affairs