This is the first volume in an ambitious project to provide a single source of reference for international environmental law. The other volumes largely comprise a collection of relevant international environmental law documents, whereas Volume 1 is a textbook. To an extent Volume 1 duplicates much of the information contained in the other volumes, and a large proportion of the book is taken up by paraphrasing the terms of these documents. This is not I feel unnecessary duplication, as the text in this volume is a lot clearer than the original documents themselves; however, it does mean that the amount of analysis in the volume of the relevant documents is quite limited. This Sands attempts to address with extensive bibliographies (labelled “select bibliography”) at the end of each chapter.

The volume is divided into three parts. Part 1, “The legal and institutional framework”, attempts to set international environmental law in context, explaining how environmental problems became to be seen as having international significance, and how environmental issues fit into the overall structure of international law (identifying the role played by actors as diverse as the United Nations and non-governmental organizations). To this extent it covers much of the subject-matter covered by Chapters 1 to 5 of International Law and the Environment by Patricia W. Birnie and Alan E. Boyle, though with a greater amount of detail. The description of the history of international environmental law is particularly well written, and it gives the reader a very useful summary of the major implications of recent important international environmental agreements and publications such as the Brundtland Report and the Rio Declaration.

The second part of the volume is entitled “Principles and rules establishing standards”. The vast majority of this section is a descriptive account of major international and regional agreements regarding the environment. A minor criticism I do have is that the discussion of principles in this