1. See Federal Republic of Nigeria. (1991) Achieving Sustainable Developnent In Nigeria: National Report to UNCED, (hereafter National Report to UNCED). Most of the 2,000 industrial establishments in Lagos State, with a population of over six million, discharge effluents directly into the Lagos lagoon, which is suspected to be one of the worst polluted inland fresh-water bodies in Africa. See “Nigeria Five Others Adopt Pollution Monitoring Manual”, The Guardian, Mar. 15, 1999 (all references to “The Guardian” are to the Nigerian Guardian newspaper). Further, oil producing companies in Nigeria flare about 75 percent of total gas production and about 95 percent of associated gas, a by-product of oil extraction, thereby releasing about 35 million tons of the global warming carbon dioxide. This ranks Nigeria as one of the worstgas-flaring nations in the world.
2. See World Bank (1990), Towards the Preparation of Nigerian Environmental Action Plan, at 23.
3. Principle 21 of the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment provides: “States have, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the sovereign right to exploit their own resources pursuant to their own environmental policies...” U.N. Doc. A/CONF. 48/14, at 2–65, and Corr.1(1972), reprinted in 11 I.L.M. 1416 (1972). Commenting on the principle, Professor Louis B. Sohn showed his preference for the Holy See’s proposal on the draft, which had proposed that in the exploitation of national resources, states should follow a”just environmental policy”. He lamented: “While this provision does not go as far as to assert that a state has unlimited sovereignty over its environment, it comes quite close to such an assertion.” Louis Sohn (1973), “The Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment”,14 Harv. Int’l L. J. 423 at 492. There has not been an improvement in outlook regarding sovereignty and resource exploitation. In reality, the clamor for complete sovereignty got some impetus by stressing that states have sovereign right to exploitation not merely in accordance with theirenvironmental policies however inauspicious, but also their developmental goals. Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (1992) U.N. Doc. A/CONF. 151/26, princ. 2 (vol. I) (1992) reprinted in 31 I.L.M. 874.
4. National Report to UNCED, (1991) at 14.
5. These include the 1968 African Convention on the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (1968) 1001 U.N.T.S. 3; Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and other Matter, (1972) 1046 U.N.T.S. 120 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, (1973) 993 U.N.T.S. 243, Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer (1985) 26 I.L.M. 1520;Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (1987) 26 I.L.M. 1550.