This book explores the seminal importance of the first UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm 1972 – the Stockholm Conference – for the development of international environmental law. By bringing together world leading experts from academia and legal practice, the book charts the development of international environmental law in the 50 years since 1972 in the areas of nature and biodiversity, chemicals and waste, oceans and water, and atmosphere and climate, and with respect to structures and institutions, consumption and production, and human rights and participatory rights in environmental matters. It analyses how the ideas and concepts of the Stockholm Conference have influenced this development and explores the novel ideas that have emerged since then. It describes the approaches of the developed and developing countries in this process and the relationship between international environmental law and other areas of law, such as the law of the sea and international economic law.