Global Journal of Politics and Law Research Vol.4, No.2, pp.1-18, March 2016 ___Published by European Centre for Research Training and Development UK (www.eajournals.org) 1 ISSN 2053-6321(Print), ISSN 2053-6593(Online) ROLE OF SOFT LAW IN ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION: AN OVERVIEW Arif Ahmed and Md. Jahid Mustofa Lecturer, Department of Law and justice, Southeast University, Dhaka, Bangladesh ABSTRACT: One of the key features of international law is the outstanding progress of law governing the environment in recent times. From a very reticent start with about no law at law, the global environmental law has developed an enormous complicated field encircling numerous treaties, declarations, general principles, and customary international law rules. It is not clandestine that this significant growth is due to a considerable extent, to the role played by the soft law instruments. Soft law is by its nature the enunciation of a norm in a non-binding written form and is considered to be the charters, resolutions, declarations or recommendations of world community that is not meant to be as binding as the international treaties. It is a core source of international law that has emerged and developed rapidly in the modern era of globalization, particularly to knob the sensitive issues, e.g., trade and commerce, protection of human rights, conservation of environment and so on. Though the idea of soft law has existed for years, scholars have attained at no consensus as to why do states regulate soft law or whether soft law is of a consistent logical category. To some extent, this perplexity replicates a profound diversity in the categories of global agreements and strategic situations that produce them. Despite it is accepted that soft law is a latent device in harmonizing the regime created by hard law and plays a key role in achieving fixed goals regarding the implementation of global environmental law. This article strives to provide a detailed definition of soft law as well as point outs its emergence and development. It also illustrates the legal status, impact, significance, and challenges of soft law. Furthermore, this research focuses on the role of soft law instruments in the conservation of global environment. KEYWORDS: Soft Law, Environment, Protection, Violation INTRODUCTION The current development of international law has been observing a crucial issue regarding the clash of interest between the implementation and enforcement of soft and hard law instruments worldwide. Despite these conflicts, the world community has become able to determine the significance of the soft law instruments in defining the legal principles and methods. In striving to protect it, it has also conceded that the soft law is a potent weapon to balance the system established by the hard law and plays a vital role in attaining a stable aim in terms of implementation of international environmental law. The soft law provides for agreement of states, general commitments and measures to accomplish besieged objectives in global standpoint. In national aspect, soft law provides an instruction to create frameworks regulating certain behavior, providing enticements to achieve certain results and setting proper responsible institutions in place. 1 Though the soft law instruments are legally non-binding, they create what are received by states as standards of behavior and promote some policies that can benefit the traditional communities. The international norms of soft law were developed in the protection of the human environment soon after the Stockholm Conference through the creation of UNEP.