7. The regulation of environmental protection

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Bell ◽  
Donald McGillivray ◽  
Ole W. Pedersen ◽  
Emma Lees ◽  
Elen Stokes
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Regulation ◽  
Information Disclosure ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
Environmental Standards ◽  
Individual Behaviour ◽  
Legal Rules ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Mandatory Rules ◽  
Legal Contexts

This chapter introduces the system of environmental regulation by building upon Ch. 4, which examined the sources of environmental law. In practice, environmental regulation involves more than the use of legal rules that forbid pollution and other forms of environmental harm. ‘Regulation’ is used to describe a wide range of different tools used in both legal and non-legal contexts—for example, it covers mandatory rules contained in environmental legislation, as well as non-binding environmental standards. The chapter outlines some of the reasons for regulating to protect the environment, before explaining how such regulation is introduced, applied, enforced, and reviewed. It examines the characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses of different approaches to standard-setting and the various instruments used to regulate potentially environmentally damaging activities. The chapter discusses several trends in modern environmental regulation, including the policy emphasis on deregulation and the use of information disclosure as a means of governing group or individual behaviour.

Reparation for Environmental Damage in Jus Post Bellum

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilias Plakokefalos
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Shared Responsibility ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
Environmental Damage ◽  
Jus Post Bellum ◽  
Typical Situation ◽  
Sharing Responsibility

This chapter explores the problems that environmental damage in armed conflict pose to the determination of shared responsibility, and especially the determination of reparations, in the context of the jus post bellum. When two actors are engaged in armed conflict, there arise no serious issues as to sharing responsibility for violations. But the fact that modern armed conflicts often involve more than two actors (e.g. Libya 2011) complicates the matters arising out of environmental harm, as there may be two or more actors contributing to the same harmful event. This is a typical situation of shared responsibility. Shared responsibility provides that the problem of reparations for environmental harm is to be examined in situations where there is a multiplicity of actors that contribute to a single harmful outcome. This definition covers the breach of obligations under jus ad bellum and jus in bello, as well as under international environmental law.

Indonesian Law

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Lindsey ◽  
Simon Butt
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Law ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
State Agencies ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
Banking Competition ◽  
Inheritance System ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Forest Law ◽  
Comprehensive Survey ◽  
The Law

This book explains Indonesia’s complex legal system and how it works. Covering a wide range of substantive topics from public to private law, including commercial, criminal, and constitutional law, it is the first comprehensive survey of Indonesian law in English. Offering clear answers to practical problems of current law, each chapter sets out relevant laws and leading court decisions, accompanied by an explanation of how the law works in practice, with an analytical critique. The book begins with an account of Indonesia’s Constitution and the key state agencies, before moving to the lawmaking process, decentralization, the judicial system and court procedure, and the legal profession (advocates, notaries, and legal aid). Part II covers traditional customary law (adat), land law, and environmental law, including forest law. Part III focuses on criminal law and procedure, including investigation, arrest, trial, sentencing, and appeals. It also covers human rights law and the law on corruption. Part IV deals with civil law, and covers civil liability, contracts, companies and other business vehicles, labour, foreign investment, taxation, insolvency, banking, competition, and media law. The book concludes in Part V with an account of Indonesia’s complex family law and inheritance system for both Muslims and non-Muslims. The book has an extensive glossary of legal terms, and detailed tables of legislation and court decisions, designed as unique resources for lawyers, policymakers, and researchers.

Legal Mentality and Its Influence in Shaping Legal Rules: the Relationship between Principal and Agent

Global Jurist ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rossella Esther Cerchia
Keyword(s):  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Small Community ◽  
Legal Rules ◽  
Agency Relationship ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Legal Context ◽  
The Family ◽  
Legal Forms ◽  
Legal Contexts ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract It is assumed that comparative legal studies, through its deep and historical analysis of law and its dissociation in legal formants, have contributed to understanding the importance of the different factors that shape legal rules. In this article, emphasis is given to a factor that is sometimes neglected in legal narrations: legal mentality or, more simply, the inherent logical way of thinking and its influence in shaping legal rules. The area of investigation is the legal relationship between principal and agent. It is a narration that selects a specific “fil rouge” to link different “pieces” throughout European history to compose a mosaic of different factors that may have contributed to developing a certain legal mentality in this area of law. The legal mentality is nothing more than the product of the extra-legal contexts in which principal and agent operate. In reference to the extra-legal context, it means the importance, above all, of the situations of proximity between the two parties: proximity that could be “spacial” (i.e., they are part of the same small community), or “relational” governed by extra-legal forms of belonging to the same group, for instance families (broader or narrower ones) or clans. This narration starts with a glance at the ancient agreement of mandatum and its roots in the Roman idea of “friendship” and personal bond. Then it continues by touching on a source of the medieval companies: the family bond, one of the stronger and more trustworthy relationships at the time. It will be shown that some aspects of that relationship are not dissimilar from the ones later formed by the case law of the English Chancery Court in the field of the law of agency. This could be seen as a result of the legacy of the stratification of a certain legal mentality shaped by a context that was created by extralegal relationships. Nowadays the modern fading of the personal bond between principal and agent has highlighted an important evolution: there was proximity then depersonalization: this is reflected in the evolution of legal rules, for instance, in French, Italian and English national law. Finally, the case of the “real” or “absolute” irrevocability of the authority shows that the agency relationship, constructed in a breeding ground characterized by trust and utilized to protect the principal's interest (or even the principal's interest), could become - through related or linked contracts - an instrument of more complex agreements. In these cases, the interest of the agent or third parties (such as creditors, contractual counterparts or “beneficiaries” in the broad sense) could lead those transactions far from the original idea of mandat or mandato or agency. In those situations, the “causa” of the agency  (to use a concept dear to civil law tradition) changes and its roots in personal bond and the principal's interest loses its strength as it is mirrored, once again, in the legal rules.

scholarly journals Bending the Rules: A Dutch Approach to Improving the Flexible Application of Environmental Standards

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 691-704 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanna Tolsma ◽  
Kars de Graaf
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Law ◽  
Green Energy ◽  
Dutch Government ◽  
Fundamental Change ◽  
Environmental Standards ◽  
Flexible Application ◽  
New System ◽  
Recovery Act

AbstractEnvironmental standards should not be a hindrance for economically relevant projects — especially in the fields of sustainability and green energy. Therefore, the Dutch legislature implemented experimental instruments in the Crisis and Recovery Act to improve the flexible application of environmental standards. They did this by allowing competent authorities to deviate from these standards. This article analyzes this Dutch approach, which can be characterized as “bending the rules.” Are these instruments legally sound and how are the relevant provisions applied in practice? Dutch government is currently working on a fundamental change of the system of environmental law with a new Environment and Planning Act. Should this new system of environmental law include a general permanent provision to deviate from environmental standards? This article provides environmental scholars with some lessons that can be learned from the Dutch Approach.

scholarly journals Law, Governance, and the Ecological Ethos

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Butt
Keyword(s):  
Coercive Force ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Command And Control ◽  
The State ◽  
Popular Participation ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
And Control

This chapter examines the limitations of both command-and-control and market-based legal mechanisms in the pursuit of environmental justice. If the environment is to be protected to at least a minimally acceptable degree, approaches that focus on the coercive force of the state must be complemented by the development of an “ecological ethos,” whereby groups and individuals are motivated to act with non-self-interested concern for the environment. The need for this ethos means that the state is dependent on the cooperation of a wide range of non-state actors. Recent work on environmental governance emphasizes the delegation of aspects of governing to such actors and supports efforts to increase popular participation in governmental processes. The chapter therefore advocates a governance approach that seeks to rectify some of the limitations of state-led environmental law, while encouraging popular participation in a way that can encourage the development of an ecological ethos among the citizenry.

Instrument Choice

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard B. Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Regulation ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
International Environmental Agreements ◽  
Positive Theory ◽  
Instrument Choice ◽  
Control Regulation ◽  
Regulatory Instruments ◽  
And Performance ◽  
And Control

This article examines the different types of environmental regulatory instruments and their role in international environmental regulation. Environmental regulatory instruments are designed to implement public norms of environmental protection, and redress the limitations of private law, market ordering, and criminal law in securing appropriate behavioural changes on the part of these actors. The article looks at command and control regulation, economic instruments, information-based approaches, and hybrid regulatory approaches. It then focuses on the characteristics and performance of different environmental regulatory instruments, environmental regulatory instrument choice in the domestic context, environmental regulatory instrument choice in the international context, distinctive characteristics of international environmental regulation, international regulatory instruments governing interactions among states, domestic regulatory instruments to implement international environmental agreements, international agreements that do not specify domestic implementing instruments, functional characteristics and performance of different instruments, positive theory regarding instrument choice, environmental governance issues, and the evolution of international environmental law.

Advisory Opinion on the Environment and Human Rights

2018 ◽  
Vol 112 (3) ◽  
pp. 460-466
Author(s):  
Angeliki Papantoniou
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Caribbean Region ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
Significant Finding ◽  
Advisory Opinion ◽  
Personal Integrity ◽  
Infrastructure Projects ◽  
Extraterritorial Jurisdiction

On November 15, 2017, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Court) rendered a historic advisory opinion (Advisory Opinion) on the relationship between human rights and the environment. The opinion was a response to a request from Colombia regarding extraterritorial jurisdiction of state parties to the American Convention, in particular their obligations under the rights to life and personal integrity, arising from the construction and operation of large-scale infrastructure projects in the Greater Caribbean region. Colombia's concern was that, due to their dimensions and permanence, such projects could cause significant environmental harm, that goes beyond national borders, and, as a consequence, adversely affect the inhabitants of the whole region and the enjoyment of their rights under the Convention (para. 2). One of the most important aspects of the Advisory Opinion is the Court's finding that in relation to large-scale transboundary infrastructure projects, state parties to the Convention can exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction under certain circumstances and thus be responsible for the human rights of the people in the affected area. Another significant finding of the Court is that Article 26 of the American Convention, which provides for the progressive realization of economic, social, and cultural rights, includes an autonomous right to a healthy environment—a right fundamental for the existence of humankind. Finally, the Court directly linked the rights to life and personal integrity with general principles of international environmental under a due diligence obligation. The Court's extensive use of international environmental law instruments, case law, and reasoning could pave the way for greater interconnection and integration between human rights and international environment law obligations.

Part III Conceptual Pillars, Ch.16 Harm Prevention

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brunnée Jutta
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Law ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
Due Diligence ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Significant Harm ◽  
Actual Harm ◽  
The Face ◽  
Harm Prevention ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter addresses how international environmental law originates from and revolves around the harm prevention rule. It focuses on three points of contention, each related to the role of due diligence in harm prevention, and each highlighted by recent judicial engagements with the harm prevention rule. First, it is generally accepted that a state's obligation to prevent environmental harm is not absolute, but requires due diligence in the face of risk of significant harm. However, it is unclear whether a failure to act diligently to avert harm on its own—absent actual harm—can amount to a breach of the harm prevention rule. Second, the relationship between the procedural and substantive dimensions of the harm prevention rule remains ambiguous. Third, there is some uncertainty as to where the line runs between the harm prevention obligation and the precautionary principle, given the focus of both notions on risk. These inter-related conceptual questions affect the harm prevention rule's function as a reference point for international environmental law.

Part VII Inter-linkages with Other Regimes, Ch.45 Human Rights

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Knox John H
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Multilateral Environmental Agreements ◽  
Healthy Environment ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Human Rights Treaties ◽  
Environmental Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Norms

This chapter examines the relationship between human rights and the environment, which has developed through the adoption and interpretation of many different national constitutions and laws, human rights treaties, and multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs). The development of what might be called ‘environmental human rights law’ has occurred in three main channels. First, efforts to achieve recognition of a human right to a healthy environment, while ineffective at the UN, have achieved widespread success at the national and regional levels. Second, some multilateral environmental instruments have incorporated human rights norms, especially rights of access to information, public participation, and remedy. Third, human rights tribunals and other monitoring bodies have ‘greened’ human rights law by applying a wide range of human rights to environmental harm. The chapter explains each of these paths of development before sketching potential lines of further development through recognition of the rights of nature and of future generations.

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