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CHARACTERISTICS OF ENVIRONMENTAL TREATIES (REMARKS ON THE BACKGROUND OF POLISH LAW)

The subject of the study is an indication of the characteristics of international agreements in the field of environmental protection. The analysis of environmental international agreements allows for the formulation of several characteristics, generally assuming that these contracts are not different from other international agreements in the national legal order and are subject to the same legal regime at international level. Characteristics include: institutionalization of treaties, specific design, susceptibility to change due to scientific progress, sectorality and subject and formal diversity. The author is aware that studying the basics of environmental protection can lead to the separation of the following characteristics.


Introduction
There are a number of occurrence in the area of environmental law which necessitate the establishment of bilateral and multilateral international co-operation. These are positive phenomena such as the creation of common natural value areas, the protection of seas, lakes and international rivers, and, more frequently, negative phenomena such as air pollution, biodiversity loss or the movement of waste. In order to take effective protective measures or to prevent undesirable occurrence, the state is obliged to undertake cooperation, the most formalized but proper one being the conclusion of international agreements. The first manifestations of international cooperation date back to the beginning of the twentieth century when bilateral interstate and first treaty agreements were concluded 1 , however the emergence 242 M. Woźniak of this issue in the United Nations (in the second half of the 1960s) contributed to strengthening the cooperation of states in the treaty formula. The culmination of international cooperation was in the 1980s and 1990s, when the international community worked out common standards in international agreements on such fundamental issues as protecting the ozone layer or preventing excessive greenhouse gas emissions (some of them in the framework of the UN International Conference "Environment and Development" in 1992).
Further international action has drawn the attention of the international community to the environmental problems associated with the onset of the globalization of the economy, which in the longer term requires taking into account the needs of sustainable development 2

On the separation of international environmental law
The number and specificity of international agreements concluded in the field of environmental protection has contributed to the creation of an international environmental law as a relatively young but already promising legal department 5 . International law of the environment can generally be defined by a set of standards regulating the rights and obligations of States, with regard to the use and protection of the environment by themselves, their organs or other entities acting on their behalf or by their mandate 6 . However, in the literature of the subject there is no agreement as to whether we are dealing with a new area of international public law, whether it is a certain "subsystem", or an independent domain 7 , which is affected by the lack of systemic unity of these norms, the failure to undertake codification trials, or finally the definitive subject of regulation 8 . As pointed out by M. Kenig-Witkowska, the distinctive feature that determines the development of this law as a separate branch is the gradual withdrawing from the traditional approach in which environmental problems are regarded as part of the reciprocal rights and obligations of polluting or polluted states to move towards a generalized approach, showing a broader perspective of environmental issues in the context of the common concern of the international community 9 .
It is worth emphasizing here that environmental law is at the same time part of administrative law 10 . In the context of other passages of this law, one can not speak of the 5

244
M. Woźniak effect of the emergence of a new branch of law such as international self-government law, international customs law, international tax law, international building law, etc., although beyond some doubt, some sections of substantive and administrative law, they are easily subjected to the process of internationalization. Due to the occurrence of environmental phenomena across borders, the process of internationalization of national laws results in the gradual emergence of a new branch of international environmental law. Polish environmental legislation in a creative and innovative way is incorporated into institutions for years or from a very recently functioning within the so-called. International environmental law, such as access to information, public participation in environmental decision-making and environmental impact assessments.
Unlike the law of the sea or the protection of human rights, codified in only a few treaties, international environmental law has not been codified yet 11 . Institutionally, there are no independent international organizations dedicated solely to the environment (UNEP is a ONZ program) or specialized environmental dispute resolution bodies.
attempts to introduce into the binding norms of international law a comprehensive approach to issues related to the functioning of civil society 15 .
Against the background of the above comments on international environmental law, it can be seen that its isolation, which is the source of a growing tendency to deepen international cooperation in the form of international agreements, can be regarded as a particular feature that determines the next features of the environmental treaties. It should be recalled that the name of the contract (treaty, convention, protocol, treaty, charter, concordat, agreement) remains unaffected by its validity, although international law has a tendency to assign certain names to certain types of international agreements 16 . It is clear from the very definition of an international agreement contained in Article 2 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties that decisive character is not the name, but the content of the rights and duties of States established in the process of adopting an international agreement. In the area of environmental protection, the most common name is the convention, which results from the fact that this name is given to international treaties that regulate important and socially important affairs of states and their mutual interests.

Characteristic features of the environmental convention
As a specific feature of environmental treaties, they are institutionalized, which means that they almost all form an institutional system for managing the substance of the treaty 17 . As a rule, they are the Conference of the Parties as decision-making bodies, which is assisted by the Secretariat appointed to provide the Conference of the Parties with due diligence. As an example, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, done in Washington on March 3, 1973, which appoints the Conference of the Parties to review the whole application of the Convention and take all decisions necessary to enable the Secretariat to carry out its duties and to undertake financial provisions 18 .Another example is provided by the Convention on Biological Diversity, drawn up on June 5, 1992, Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, which is currently one of the most important universal international agreements 19 . Article 23 (1) of the Convention establishes a Conference of the Parties for the management of the matter of the Treaty, which the Secretariat makes. The high 15  Among the international organizations, the most developed system of environmental law is the European Union. This organization, alone or together with all or some of the Member States, is a party to dozens of international agreements in the field of environmental protection. It can be said that the interest of the European Union in environmental protection, which has taken on various forms in the past, from adopting programs for the protection of the environment through the creation of EU legislation (formerly Community), to the conclusion of international agreements, to which the personality of legal personality has contributed. With the development and strengthening of the EU's legal instruments in the sphere of environmental protection, a new branch of law has emerged: European environmental laws, which can not be clearly separated from international environmental law 26 . International agreements are a common denominator of these two branches of law, and 20  they themselves have more tangent points and are complementary to one another. The European Union is currently the site of many global, regional or sub regional environmental agreements covering a wide range of topics such as nature conservation and biodiversity, climate change and cross-border air or water pollution. For example, during the 10 Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity held in Nagoya (Japan) in 2010, the EU has made a significant contribution to reaching an agreement on a global strategy for halting biodiversity loss by 2020. The Union also contributed to the decision to develop global sustainability goals for all states adopted at the Rio+20 Sustainable Development Conference in 2012. The EU has also joined the CITES Convention to continue the fight against wildlife offenses at international level.
Rudimentary essential feature of international agreements in the field of environmental protection is their specific construction. These agreements may consist of three parts: 1) framework agreement, 2) protocols, 3) annexes, or 2 parts: framework agreement and protocol or agreement and appendices. Under the framework agreement, the parties establish general government obligations and form contract management structures. Protocols carry the burden of implementing the treaty (under national law they can be compared to regulations) and are often technical, enforceable. The framework agreement is mandatory, whereas accession to the protocols is usually optional. For example, the Convention on Biological Diversity sets out the framework objectives of the Convention (biodiversity conservation, sustainable use of its components and fair sharing of the benefits of using genetic resources), while the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources implements the third objective of the Convention. Another example is provided by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 9 May 1992 27 , which defines in general terms the objectives of the Convention (the stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere) and the principles to be followed by the Parties to the Convention. The specific implementing document is the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 11 December 1997 setting a timeframe for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The Annexes to the International Conventions contain specific provisions, eg lists of species, substances, products or activities e.g. The CITES Convention lists protected species in three annexes, pointing to the varying degrees of international trade regimes of species endangered by extinction.
Another feature of environmental contracts can be considered that most of them do not allow reservations, some do not contain any provisions on this subject, few (eg CITES) allow reservations to a limited extent. As M. Kenig-Witkowska points out, the reasons for the significant limitation of the right to lodge objections to environmental contracts should be found in their framework 28 .

M. Woźniak
The spectacular nature of the treaties in the field of environmental protection is the susceptibility to the development of science and technological progress, which necessitates amendments to them more often than in any other field. E.g. When the Ozone Layer Convention was adopted on March 22, 1985, the state of ozone research was an identification phase. Already three years later, a higher level of knowledge about the "ozone hole" has pushed up work on the international forum and has become a driver of additional protocols. Another important feature of international agreements in the sphere of environmental protection is their sectorality. This feature has evolved under EU law, but can be successfully identified as a feature of environmental treaties. EU environmental legislation is sectoral because it relates to particular elements of the environment (water, air, nature and biodiversity) or types of nuisance (noise, GMO, pollution, chemicals, waste). Similarly, international environmental agreements generally concern environmental elements such as air, ozone, biodiversity, landscape or threats such as air pollution, waste movement, illegal trade in protected plant and animal species. In this sense, these contracts are sectoral. Different and therefore groundbreaking is the Aarhus Convention signed in Denmark on 25 June 1998 on access to information, public participation in decision-making and access to justice in environmental matters 31 . The particular nature of this convention lies in the fact that by regulating three groups of horizontal issues (access to information, participation and access to justice) In addition to the majority of international environmental agreements that generally state the obligations of one country to another, the Aarhus Convention, like most international human rights treaties, is primarily concerned with the obligations of states towards their own citizens. It is made up of specific legal norms that give the public a clear set of rights or impose obligations on the administration, and are therefore directly applicable in the national legal order, including before the courts 32 . 29  Another feature of international environmental agreements is their diversity, both in terms of binding power and type of contract. It is impossible to find in them a generalized criterion for assigning tasks to national authorities. In international environmental protection, we often deal with acts of a declaration or postulate that do not in principle contain direct instructions to national authorities. "Soft law" documents, because of the very general nature of the provisions, rarely assign tasks directly to public authorities (for example, the obligation to inform citizens about the state of the environment -Article 10 of the Rio de Janeiro Declaration). character of the postulate than the specific guideline. In this group of international laws, there are usually general objectives and means of action, and not specific tasks for state bodies 33 . Often, the implementation of these objectives requires action by the legislative authority or appropriate steps by national enforcement bodies. Analysis of this type of international law allows us to conclude that, because of the general, even programmatic nature of the provisions, they can not be directly applied. Remember the international law of the primacy principle of hard law (legally binding) norms with soft law (non-legally binding).
International multilateral (universal) agreements prevail in international environmental protection. They cover various areas that must be regulated internationally. The purpose of regulating most universal contracts is to protect what is often referred to in the environment as the "common heritage of mankind 34 . Global protection now uses the following areas: the seas and oceans 35 , air and space 36 ,fauna and flora 37 , cultural heritage 38 and biodiversity 39 .
The manner of assigning these contracts to national authorities varies. For example, the Vienna Convention obliges the signatory States to carry out control and measurement activities, namely to carry out systematic studies on the ozone layer and the effects of its weakening. The States also undertook to exchange information obtained through these measurements. Immediate obligations resulting from the Convention result in the obligation for domestic law to impose on the specified entities the obligation to carry out the monitoring 250 M. Woźniak indicated in the provisions of the agreement. In the case of entities within the public administration structure, this can be done both by incorporating the appropriate obligation into the normative task catalog of an individual and by the internal management 40 . The implementation of the contract requires taking a number of organizational actions in the departments concerned and, consequently, the possibility of issuing intra-departmental regulations 41 . Another example is provided by the CITES Convention, which assigns to national authorities the task of regulating trade in specimens of endangered species and issuing relevant permits and certificates. At the same time the convention does not indicate what the organ is supposed to be, so it is necessary to presume it under domestic law.
A particular category of multilateral international agreements is regional agreements.
The region from the perspective of international environmental protection is a natural whole, a continent, a sea or a watershed with common features. Combining the efforts of states in a given region gives you a better chance of effectively implementing a specific contract 42 .
Regional agreements allow for greater resources and joint actions, including adequate mutual control. According to K. Wolfke, regional environmental protection has the advantages of bilateral protection without its drawbacks 43 . These contracts generally treat the environment in a more detailed and specific way than does universal law. Regional protection is more likely to be successfully implemented, because it is carried out directly with stakeholders and with full assistance 44 . Fewer signatories to these agreements -countries with similar environmental problems -guarantee greater portability of content to internal systems and faster implementation 45 . International practice provides many varied examples of regional environmental agreements. The Helsinki Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area, Helsinki, 9 April 1992 46 . Another group is bilateral agreements.
A special place in this group is occupied by agreements concluded by neighboring states. These include either the whole of the co-operation of the countries concerned, or they focus on the selected common environmental concerns. The subject of these agreements is usually the protection of a common part of the environment: border water or air, but can also be a comprehensive environmental cooperation 47 . There is no doubt that bilateral cooperation in each field has many advantages over multilateral cooperation. These agreements are relatively easy to conclude, as they require only a settlement between the two most interested countries. In addition, it is easier and faster to agree on, for example, a common goal, the mechanisms and tools for achieving it, and to provide a more effective system for monitoring the performance of the contract 48 .The weak side of this type of contract is the ease with which mutual obligations can be released from the environmental commitments to the detriment of the regional and even the global ecosystem, and they do not provide sufficient guarantees of compliance without additional international control 49 Agreements of this type define agreed reciprocal obligations such terms as co-operation, consultation, consent, etc., often involving specific tasks and imposing obligations on national authorities 50 .
The way they are implemented into the national order and the assignment of tasks to administrations is analogous to that of multilateral and regional agreements. These agreements often contain direct and specific tasks for the administration or provide for the creation of a joint executive body in the form of committees or specially appointed by the parties. This is illustrated by the Polish-German agreement on cooperation in the field of water management in border waters signed in Warsaw on 19 V 1992 51 or the same name signed between Poland and Ukraine signed in Kiev on 10 X 1996 52 . Both agreements agree that cooperation between the parties takes place either through the Border Water Commission or through the direct cooperation of the competent authorities.
Sectoral international agreements (government agreements), which are not considered closer to the environmental protection tool, are often overlooked, but the effectiveness of environmental protection in specific field conditions often depends on the functioning of bilateral cooperation at lower levels. Normative grounds for concluding such contracts are contained in a series of normative acts defining the tasks and competences of field authorities. At the level of international law, the basis for strengthening international cooperation in the form of inter-ministerial agreements can be found in the content of some of the ratified international environmental agreements which provide for the possibility of developing and clarifying their provisions by concluding successive agreements of different types and by various entities, central to all kinds of institutions; These agreements could be conventionally called executives. Eg, Article 8 of the Espoo 1991 Convention 53 , under the heading "Bilateral and Multilateral Cooperation", provides that, in order to implement the obligations arising from this Convention, the Parties may continue to apply existing or new bilateral, multilateral or other agreements.
The above described features of international agreements entail the conclusion that environmental treaty practice has a far-reaching character. The particular nature of 48  environmental problems, their variability, the development of research in this field are reflected in international environmental law standards, which often have to deal with narrow technical and engineering issues. As a summary of the above considerations, another feature of environmental international agreements, which is consistent development of environmental law standards at international level. Although there has been some slowdown in the number of treaties concluded in the last two decades, there have emerged new qualitative international treaties that deal with environmental issues in a horizontal way (the Aahrus Convention). These standards, beyond all doubt, represent the response of the international community to the emerging needs of the environment in a given place and time. The characteristics described in the study do not cover the whole issue, but may contribute to the consolidation of common, didactic and scientific standards of international environmental law.