Desafíos impuestos por el derecho internacional ambiental al derecho internacional clásico

The emergence of international environmental law has producedimportant challenges to the very foundations of public international law. Traditional concepts such as state sovereignty, subjects of international law, and the early perspectives of national securityare being transformed. The needs of the contemporary international society differ from the ones of the Wesphalian conception, situations which clearly explains the raise of alternative views for theunderstanding of the current dynamics of international law, whereconcepts like res communis, common concerns and simply “commons” takea privileged place in the study of international law. Theforegoing has been strengthened by the international development ofthe so called erga ommnes obligations, label which is being used byinternational environmental law as the perfect explanation of its own existence.This academic article presents and studies the abovementioned conceptstrying to compare what international law used to be before the emergence of international environmental law and what it is and whatit should be in order to attend the developments and challenges imposed by the contemporary international society, particularly by international environmental law,a new fi eld of the corpus juris of public international law.