The Environment, Climate Change and its Challenges: Examining the Sharia Perspectives and Islamic State Practices

1. The Environment, Climate Change and its Challenges: Examining the Sharia Perspectives and Islamic State Practices Javaid Rehman, Professor of Law, Brunel University, London

2. Introduction • Amidst substantial jurisprudence on IEL, Islamic perspectives appear overlooked • Presentation – focuses on Islamic Law and examines Sharia’s regulations on protection/development of Environment and climate change.

3. Key Objectives • Articulate Sharia’s principles on Environmental Law • Highlight relationship & contributions of Sharia towards IEL • Examples from Islamic State practices (OIC members) regards environment & Climate change • Conclusions – notwithstanding inconsistencies – considerable flexibility

4. Sharia’s principles on Environmental Law • Sharia – also known as Islamic law derives from: • Primary sources – Quran & Sunna (Prophet’s tradition & practices) • Secondary sources - Qiyas (application by analogy or deduction); Ijma (consensus) and Ijthihad (independent legal reasoning).

5. Sharia’s principles on Environmental Law • Sharia not simply representing religious laws, but covers wide range of secular laws and ordinances • articulated principles–regulating environment (principles & policies & ordinances e.g. preservation of water & air resources, sustainable development of land and soil, protection of plants & marine environment).

6. Sharia’s principles on Environmental Law • Sharia & environment relationship: • Sharia literal meaning “the road to the watering place”; “the righteous path to follow to reach the goal set by the Quran”, • analogy being that as water is essential to human existence, so is the righteous path as ordained by God Almighty. • Sharia’s principles to be visualised in context of 7th Century Arabia – with scarcity of resources.

7. Sharia’s contribution to Environment • Highlights value of resources e.g. ‘water’, ‘fresh air’, vegetation, ‘fruits’, ‘trees’ and ‘Animals’. • Various references: e.g. Quran • “Then let man consider his nourishment: that We pour down the rain in showers, and We split the earth in fragments, and therein make the grain to grow, and vines and herbs, and olives and palms, and gardens of dense foliage, and fruits and fodder–provision for you and your cattle”.

8. Sharia’s contribution to Environment • “There is not an animal on the earth, nor any being that wings its flight, but is a people like unto you”. The Quran S 6: 38. • Considerable tradition of Prophet in protection of environment, plants, animals: • - declared: territory around Makah & Medina inviolable sanctuaries (can’t cut trees, animals protected from any harm)

9. Sharia’s contribution to Environment - Concept of Trust and Inter-Generational Duties Human beings guardians, responsibility to look after planet - Inter-Generational Responsibilities Grant of Trust till eternity, therefore, environmental protection obligation on all States

10. Sharia’s contribution to Environment • - Sustainable Development • Within Sharia ‘integration of the development and conservation of natural resources is clear in the idea of bringing life to the land and causing it to flourish through agriculture, cultivation and construction’. Bagader et al (1994).

11. Modern Islamic State Practices • Considerable Environmental Challenges - • OIC members eg Bangladesh, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan etc face: • Poverty; overpopulation; economic underdevelopment; armed conflicts; imbalanced political structures • Examples of damage to environment eg • Bangladeshi civil war (1970); • Iran-Iraq war (1980-88); Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait (1990-91); Iraq invasion (2003 - )

12. Modern Islamic State Practices • Contributions eg • Regional Organisation for the Protection of Marine Environment (ROPME) established & operational since 1979 • Members: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates • new ethos protecting marine environment, generated new standards (protocols - hazardous waste, marine emergencies & sea-based pollution)

13. Modern Islamic State Practices • Protocol concerning Regional Co-operation in Combating Pollution by Oil & Other Harmful Substances in Cases of Emergency (1978) • Protocol–Marine Pollution resulting from Exploration and Exploitation of the Continental Shelf (1989) • Protocol for–Protection of the Marine Environment against Pollution from Land-Based Sources (1990) • Protocol on Control of Marine Transboundary Movements & Disposal of Hazardous Wastes (1998) • Protocol concerning the conservation of biological diversity & establishment of protected areas.

14. Modern Islamic State Practices • Domestic Level – imaginative Legal mechanisms for protecting environment • ‘Public Interest Litigation’ - flexible rules in • :initiating proceeding (eg letter to court); locus standi; inquisitorial (rather than adversarial) proceedings & innovative remedies • Shehla Zia v. WAPDA PLD 1994 SC 693 (Article 9 constitutional right to life, right to unpolluted environment)