This volume presents an overview of public environmental law in the European Union and the United States of America. It focusses on constitutional and administrative environmental law but also includes other areas of law such as criminal and private law (in as far as these are relevant to the understanding of public environmental law). The book offers a comparative introduction, by editors and native authors, to the most important aspects of environmental law (prevention of pollution). It thus aspires to contribute to both 'transboundary' understanding of different regimes for Environmental Law and to a greater co-operation between different international and European partners in their strive towards more adequate (legal) modes of protection and improvement of the environment. For the purpose of the use of this book in education, research and legal practice, the contributions to the book are all based on one and the same format, thus making it more accessible for its readers. The final chapter offers comparative remarks by the editors.
Authorities in the fields of environmental and international law and policy, political science, environmental technology, and public administration compare and contrast the ways in which the United States and the European Union handle similar environmental issues. The contributors critically analyze the influence of culture and history on the way apparently similar developed democracies handle the same problems; they examine the center-state relationship as it applies to EU member countries in contrast to states within the United States; they look at the challenge of transboundary, international, and global environmental problems, and how these relate to the still-emerging geopolitical reconfigurations involved in such structures as NAFTA and the EU; and they examine how transnational resources are handled in the North American and EU contexts. Randall Baker has assembled leading experts who examine significant issues for policymakers and environmentalists in North America and Western Europe.
This book provides a comparative analysis of environmental regulation in multi-jurisdictional legal and political systems, focusing on the United States, the European Union, and the international community. Each of these systems must deal with environmental interdependencies that cross local borders. Some transjurisdictional environmental problems are global, including stratospheric ozone depletion, climate change and the loss of biodiversity. Other environmental problems, however, are localized in their effect on health and the environment: for example, municipal waste disposal, many forms of pollution and resource development, and drinking water quality. These varying jurisdictional and environmental circumstances pose the central question of how responsibility for addressing different environmental problems should be allocated among the different levels of decision making and implementation in a multi-jurisdictional system.
Environmental law has expanded drastically since its origins in the 1950s. Initially, it was the ratification of international treaties and conventions that provided environmental protections. However, in the 1970s, increased political and public concern spurred the European Community and the United States to create additional environmental protections by means of regulations, directives and statutes. Since that time, environmental law and policy-making has continued to grow into the impressive body of law it is today. This volume contains a comprehensive compilation of the most important international, European Community and U.S. environmental law treaties and statutes. To promote comparative analysis and better law-making, the treaties and statutes are arranged thematically based on the ten most relevant points of action in today's environmental policy: the general principles environmental information, participation and justice; environmental and safety reports and classified installations prevention and management of waste atmospheric pollution water pollution noise pollution nature conservation environment and trade environmental liability, labels and management systems.
Environmental regulation has come of age in recent decades as the blunt methods of command-and-control have been subjected to trenchant criticism from both economists and lawyers in the United States and Europe. As a result of this intellectual development, as well as continuing and increasing severity of environmental problems, there is a need for fresh thinking about regulatory methods that are rational from both economic and legal points of view. This book focuses on the viability of one particular regulatory innovation--the use of agreements or contracts for environmental regulation--as it has been practised in the United States and Europe. The various contributions explore the general idea that certain kinds of environmental problems may best be addressed through contracts among interested parties, including representatives of various levels of government, business, local community and employment representatives, and public interest groups. The parties get together to discuss a particular problem and then agree to an agreement or contract designed to address key issues and interests. At least in some situations, this approach may yield greater flexibility, stronger commitment, and more creative outcomes than traditional command-and-control regulation. Experiments in the use of environmental contracts have begun on both sides of the Atlantic, a fact which makes the comparative study offered here especially timely and valuable.
It is a commonplace that pollution knows no borders, and that environmental law must allow for cross-border implementation. The European Union specifies this principle in EC directives on integrated pollution prevention and control (IPPC), on environmental impact assessment (EIA), and on the control of major accident hazards involving dangerous substances (Seveso II). This is the first book to investigate from both empirical and normative perspectives the effectiveness of these directives at the national level. It provides by far the most extensive comparative analysis and evaluation of the industrial permitting and inspections, EIA, and major accident prevention in the EU. Offering an in-depth study of the transposition and implementation of EC environmental directives in eight EU member states (Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom), the author who has played a significant role in the formulation of environmental legislation and regulation at both the national (German) and EU levelsand¿provides a stable base for an assessment of the benefits and costs of the integrated approach to environmental protection. Among the factors considered are the following: key features of national constitutional, administraand¬tive, and judicial systems which provide the framework for environand¬mental regulations and their implementation in the eight countries under study; procedures and substantive requirements transposing the IPPC, EIA and Seveso II directives into national laws; and evaluation of national deficiencies and the extent of muddling through. The empirical part of Dr Bohne's analysis draws on 138 expert interviews with public and private actors, a survey of 178 public authorities, and document analyses of selected industrial permits and environmental impact statements. His comparative analysis of procedural, organizational, and substantive integration makes it possible to identify and compare national accomplishments in regulatory integration, and offers new insights into the effectiveness and limits of EC law. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings for European governance and better regulation after the enlargement of the EU. This thoroughly researched, rigorous, and insightful study will be of great interest and value to policymakers, regulators, business people, environmental NGOs, consultants, and lawyers, as well as to students of environmental policies and European governance.
This provides not only a summary of the criminal prosecution of environmental law in the various countries, but also addresses differences and similarities in practice with respect to environmental criminal law. A critical analysis of the answers is also provided."--Jacket.
This Handbook is the first comprehensive account of comparative environmental law. It examines in detail the methodological foundations of the discipline as well as the substance of environmental law across countries from four vantage points: country studies from all continents, responses to common problems (including air pollution, water management, nature conservation, genetically modified organisms, climate change and energy, chemicals, waste), foundational components of environmental law systems (including principles, property rights, administrative and judicial organisation, command-and-control regulation, market mechanisms, informational techniques and liability mechanisms), and common interactions of environmental protection with the broader public, private, and criminal law contexts. The volume brings together the foremost authorities in this field from around the world to provide a concise, self-contained, and technically rigorous account of environmental law as a single overall system.
The book describes and analyses how environmental issues are regulated in several federal, regional and unitary systems and in the European Union. The comparative analysis reveals common trends towards a multi-layered environmental governance, cross-cutting traditional distinctions among different state models. In the second part, the case study of the management and protection of water resources is selected and analysed in the same legal systems. Disaggregating environmental protection into more specific competence fields allows trends and challenges to be tested The book casts light on the relationship between the state models as to the division of powers and environmental governance. It develops theoretical and practical foundations of contemporary, multi-level environmental law and challenges consolidated approaches in federal studies.
This book provides a practical, functional comparison among various institutions, tools, implementation practices and norms in environmental law across legal cultures. This is a new approach that focuses on the act of comparison, looking at legal practice, from the ground up, including the perspective of citizens. Most literature on comparative environmental law either focuses on a two-way comparison of state jurisdictions or simply juxtaposes environmental features of two or more state jurisdictions without engaging in any analysis of the comparison. However, this book treats legal cultures as the objects of comparison as it provides practical comparisons among various institutions, tools and norms in environmental law. The arrangement and organisation of the material reverses the more traditional presentation of comparative environmental law as a series of countries within which separate descriptions are respectively presented. In this book the reader is presented with environmental legal themes, with examples and case studies drawn from various cultures that are compared in order to help understand the theme. Case studies draw on the authors’ experiences in a range of legal cultures, including in Australia, Brazil, China, Chile, Ethiopia, Germany, India, Nigeria, Slovakia, and the USA. The comparative nature of the book allows domestic professionals to develop skills to enable them to understand and advocate broader contexts for clients, and helps students become more aware of specific legal systems while questioning why their own system functions (or does not function) as it does. The book is aimed at advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of environmental law as well as researchers and practitioners.
