Michael Bothe

Professor Emeritus
J.W. Goethe University Frankfurt/Main
Germany

Jan 29, 2019

Michael Bothe is Professor Emeritus of Public Law at the J.W. Goethe University Frankfurt/Main. Throughout his career, he has worked on questions of international and comparative law regarding protection of the environment in relation to armed conflict. He studied law at the University of Heidelberg and Hamburg and International Relations at the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva. He has held positions as Chair in Public International Law at the Universities of Hannover and Frankfurt (where he also was Dean), and as president of the German Society for International Law, of the European Environmental Law Association, of the International Humanitarian Fact-finding Commission, and of the German Committee for International Humanitarian Law. He also was Vice-President of International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Commission on Environmental Law and is co-chair emeritus of the World Commission on Environmental Law Specialist Group on Armed Conflict and Environment. He has served as counsel in various cases before the International Court of Justice and the German Federal Constitutional Court, and he has been a visiting professor in many universities around the world. Michael has published widely on international and comparative environmental law, international humanitarian law, and the protection of the environment in relation to armed conflict.

Michael has been a pioneer in both topics of armed conflict and the environment. Michael’s dissertation, authored in the late 1960s, focused on international law governing the new phenomenon of peacekeeping missions. In the early 1970s, he became a leading expert in the emerging area of environmental law in Germany. These two interests merged, with his early and sustained involvement with the topic of protection of the environment in relation to armed conflict since early meetings on the topic in the 1970s. He has been a driving force in pushing for legal research into possibilities for protection of the environment during times of war. He says, “A great lesson has been how much the environment and natural resources are both necessary for survival and can be a source of conflict. Major conflicts have arisen around natural resources in many respects. It is a problem area, which is of concern for the future and it should be of concern for people working in both international politics and law.” He concludes: “All human activities have to respect the rights of future generations – fighting wars not excluded!”

After five decades of work, Michael remains active. Michael is still actively publishing and researching avenues for legal restraints on the use of military force in order to better protect the environment during times of war. He has also been examining the limitations of the Paris Climate Agreement and possible avenues for expansion. His recent publications include “The Ethics, Principles and Objectives of Protection of the Environment in Times of Armed Conflict”, in War and Environment: New Approaches, 2014; “The ILC’s Special Rapporteur’s Preliminary Report on the Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts”, in Essays in Honour of Flavia Lattanzi, 2016; “Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts”, in Essays in Honour of Djamchid Momtaz, 2017; and “UN Peace Operations”, Handbook of the Law of Visiting Forces, 2018.

As for the importance of environmental peacebuilding, Michael emphasizes the importance of restoration of the environment as a major element of post-conflict peacebuilding and the avoidance of resource conflicts as an important element in the maintenance of international peace. As a long-term practitioner and scholar, he hopes that the Association will continue to explore and develop these areas.