Seminar paper from the year 1994 in the subject Politics - Environmental Policy, grade: 2, University of Vienna (Institut für Völkerrecht), course: Konversatorium Internationale Environmental Policy, language: English, abstract: Inland water pollution is not a recent phenomena, and is documented throughout history.The general rules and law have therefore a long lasting tradition, but were seriously redrafted in the 20th century. Upon the Harmon Doctrin a considerable international standard of soft law is under development within the UN System as well as at a multilateral and a bilateral basis. Beside that a whole set of academic principles has been developed.
Due to this developement, there a a series of principles in the Agenda 21, the Helsinki rules, Helsinki Convention and the Council of Europe.
Examples of regional agreements in North America and Western and Central Europe are briefly described.
As regards the EU the situation presented does not consider the European Framework Directive Water, but the situation leading to the development of of this legal framework.