The Environment Loses a Champion: Ambassador Stuart J. Beck ‘71

We are saddened to report the passing of Ambassador Stuart J. Beck ’71, a long-time diplomatic representative for the nation of Palau and a tireless advocate for oceans, biodiversity, climate justice, and the needs and rights of small island developing states. In the next issue of the Yale Law Report, Professor Douglas Kysar and Aaron Korman, former Deputy Head of Palau’s Mission to the United Nations, will pay tribute to Ambassador Beck. Below we reproduce Professor Kysar’s words of introduction when Ambassador Beck delivered a keynote address at a Yale Law School conference, “Global Climate Change Policy Without the United States: Thinking the Unthinkable,” held on November 9-10, 2012.

View Ambassador Beck’s address.

Our lunch speaker today is Ambassador Stuart Beck of the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Palau to the United Nations. I have had the honor and pleasure of getting to know the Ambassador this semester as we have been co-teaching a course on the potential role of the International Court of Justice in breaking the climate negotiations deadlock. He is a compelling person with a compelling story and a compelling vision for the future of international environmental governance.

A few years after he graduated from Yale Law School in 1971, Ambassador Beck became involved in the struggle for independence in Palau, which at the time was still a trust territory of the United States. Over a long and arduous course of negotiations, Ambassador Beck represented the Palauan nationalists in their successful campaign and, in 1994, Palau became the last country in the world to officially shed its colonial status. His relationship with Palau continued as he was given honorary citizenship and was eventually named the country’s first ambassador to the United Nations, a position he has held continuously ever since.

It has been an inspiring and fruitful partnership. With Ambassador Beck’s leadership, Palau has embarked on a number of important environmental initiatives, including campaigns at the United Nations to end the highly destructive fishing practices of bottom trawling and shark finning, and to raise awareness within the Security Council of the link between climate change and security issues. On the international plane, Palau has been likened to a “boxer that punches above its weight class.” It’s no overstatement to say that Ambassador Beck is Palau’s right hook. [Editors’ Note: Professor Kysar has since learned that Ambassador Beck was a southpaw]. As he recognized, the route to sovereignty in the eyes of the world community is through engagement and leadership within international relations.

Even Palau’s domestic policies are designed with the goal of inspiring other nations and actors to follow suit. For instance, Palau’s Protected Areas Network Act, which has designated and supports dozens of protected areas countrywide, including fringing reefs, lagoons, a sardine sanctuary, and mangroves, has become a model of sustainable ocean and coast management worldwide. So too has Palau’s Shark Haven Act, which protects more than a hundred species of deep water and reef sharks in Palau’s waters. For these two exemplary programs, Palau was recently named the recipient of the World Future Council’s 2012 Future Policy Award.

Not bad for a country with fewer than 20,000 people and fewer than 20 years of formally recognized sovereignty. Not bad either for that nation’s right hook, who it is my honor now to welcome to the podium, Ambassador Stuart Beck.