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The notion of sustainable development has become, over the last fifteen years, an integral part of international environmental law and policy. It is recognition that environmental issues do not exist in a vacuum, but rather are part of much wider structural issues involving both economic and social dimensions. However, does this concern for sustainable development now mean that protecting the natural environment is no longer about ecological conservation per se, but rather is simply about ensuring an adequate environment to maintain economic development? And if so, what of those environments where the economic value is a secondary consideration? Or where human activity has a disproportionate effect? Can sustainable development be interpreted in a way that reconciles these seemingly opposite demands? This paper examines these issues from the perspective of the 1991 Madrid Protocol on Environmental Protection to the 1959 Antarctic Treaty. It will suggest that sustainable development is a broader concept than one that simply requires an instrumental approach to environmental protection. In fact, the paper will conclude that sustainable development is a relatively meaningless notion if it does not also contain a strong element of environmental conservation, and not only in such ecologically important areas as Antarctica.

Antarctica; Madrid Protocol on Environmental Protection.

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* Resolutions from the 51^st Meeting are available on the American Society of International Law – Wildlife Interest Group website.

This paper describes the circumstances surrounding charges laid against a retail vendor of Traditional Asian Medicinals under Canada’s Wild Animal and Plant Protection and Regulation of International and Interprovincial Trade Act (WAPPRIITA). The vendor was charged with selling a product containing species listed as Appendix I under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES ).