The analysis so far presented has tried to establish a way of thinking about
fairness in international law and has sought to apply those insights to the
process by which law is made in the international community, stressing first,
the participation of people and peoples and secondly, the burgeoning role of
international institutions in conflict resolution. Fairness discourse, however,
is not solely about process. The importance of process lies in its effect on
outcomes. Outcomes are cardinal indicators of fairness. Outcomes also
provide a measure of the fairness of the process by which they are fashioned.

Now that our focus has shifted from how law is made to what law is made,
our critical examination of the system shifts from emphasis on 'no trumping'
and legitimacy theory to an examination of the distributive justice achieved
by law and institutions. To demonstrate this aspect of fairness critique, we
will examine two clusters of rapid growth in international law and
institutions, clusters in which questions of distributive justice may readily be
identified, but in which answers are elusive and often refer us back to
process. The first of these clusters is concerned with the environment, the
second with trade and development.

Our biosphere is being degraded and depleted at an alarming rate. Scientists
have warned that this applies to the seas, major freshwater sources, the
atmosphere, forests, tropical agricultural lands, and even species. Specialists
have pointed to the consequences: diminishing fish stocks, atmospheric
warming and flooding, ozone depletion probably conducing to rising rates of
cancer, aerial pollution with consequent respiratory disease, desertification
and hunger, and the threatened or actual extinction of species, from micro-
organisms to the elephant, whale, and black rhino. This raises the question:
are persons--those now alive and those yet to be born--to be legally entitled
to a quality of life which is globally applicable and, where necessary, globally
implemented and enforced?

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