Resources, Rights, and Environmental Regulation

Prior to the Human Rights Act 1998, there were significant expectations that it would promote the development of environmental rights and extend remedies for environmental harm. This has not been the case, but then the expectations were probably always false. The paper points to three reasons why: the retention of a strong model of parliamentary sovereignty; the need to mould human rights principles alongside the common law; the traditional reluctance of the courts to determine questions of utility where questions of resource allocation arise. The paper concludes by reflecting on whether one would hope, in any case, to advance the cause of the environment through the mechanism of the Convention and suggests that there may be reasons to doubt the wisdom of this approach.     

欧共体:追求环境与贸易的平衡

欧共体条约中有关环境的一章 (第 1 74- 1 76条 )是 1 987年才增加进去的。然而 ,这些条款并不从属于关于商品自由流通的条款。它们强调了环境问题的特殊意义。条约第 1 74条指出 ,欧共体环境政策旨在实现高层次的环境保护 ,这样 ,根据第 95条第 3款的要求 ,欧共体委员会将以此为依据提出环境立法动议。条约第 1 75条和第 1 76条允许成员国在欧共体采取措施之后实施更严格的环境保护措施。条约第六条也具有特殊的意义 ,它规定 ,环境保护要求必须纳入到共同体政策和活动的制定与实施中 ,尤其为促进可持续发展。所有这些条款都表明 ,欧共体条…     

Whales, Sustainability and International Environmental Governance

The international governance structures in place with respect to whales are dominated by the International Whaling Commission (IWC). However, the IWC's constitutive document, the 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW), lacks many critical elements of good governance which have evolved since the conclusion of the convention. Since the signing of the ICRW, there have been significant and far-reaching developments in the ways and means by which sustainable development and environmental policy is formulated and implemented.
Sustainability principles have expanded well beyond limited conservation objectives to include, in particular, the precautionary and ecosystem approaches. International governance has also evolved to require efficient and participation-based decision-making processes, including integrated management and sustainability, efficient and participation-based decision-making processes, international cooperation between States and coordination between international agencies, transparency, and dispute-resolution and compliance mechanisms. These are all elemental aspects of modern environmental governance.
Necessary reforms to the ICRW are substantial, and in light of the unanimity required, it is likely that only a new convention will achieve the necessary changes. A governance framework for whales must enable and encourage participants and stakeholders to cooperate in a spirit of global partnership. The goal should be to conserve, protect and restore the health and integrity of the global whale populations as part of the overall goal of the sustainability of the oceans and seas implementing the ecosystem and precautionary approaches. It must integrate with other elements of international governance to that wider goal.     

Global Governance,Criminalisation and Environmental Change

This article examines the environmental impact of criminalisation. It argues that developing societies are increasingly drawn into globalised networks that inextricably link the global and local, the legal and illegal. This means that in order to understand the causes of environmental degradation it is no longer useful to focus on the formal institutions and practices of government and business. Instead, this article uses the concept of the shadow state to examine and understand the causes of environmental change in two illustrative cases of Madagascar and Belize.     

Policy Coherence, Global Environmental Governance, and Poverty Reduction

This paper explores linkages between policy coherence, global environmental governance, and poverty reduction. It begins with a few thoughts on what these terms mean, and how they are linked. It then provides some perspectives on how the linkages might be improved over time. The paper takes the view that the most coherent institutional framework for both poverty reduction and environmental protection is likely to be one that is relatively decentralised, and based on a modular (networking) structure. The implication is that this framework should rely mainly on domestic and regional governance institutions, rather than on global ones. Effective management of environmental problems (both national and international) also implies a judicious mix of strong government institutions, smooth-functioning markets, and well-targeted infrastructure investments. The business and labour communities are therefore crucial. Other elements of civil society, notably the NGOs, also have important roles to play. Global environmental governance will have to overcome significant resistance insofar as the interests of the developing countries are concerned. Developing countries will need to be convinced that it is in their best interest to participate in global environmental institutions. The best way of making this case is to link (local) poverty reduction objectives explicitly to (both local and global) environmental protection goals. Bringing greater coherence to international trade, investment, and development co-operation policies could make an important contribution to strengthening these linkages. Investment is particularly important here – in the future, investment governance will likely prove to be more important for poverty reduction than environmental governance. Focusing on global environmental governance will not be enough.     

Environmental risks,the judgment-proof problem and financial responsibility

This paper examines a setting in which a firm is liable to pay environmental damages caused by its activity but may not have sufficient wealth for repair of damages. In order to induce the full internalization of the environmental cost, the firm is required to demonstrate a financial guarantee from a solvent party that covers this cost. Since the firm and the guarantor are joint liable for the harm caused by the firm, it is in the interest of the guarantor to design the guarantee contract in order to induce the firm to take an adequate level of prevention. First, I show that financial responsibility regime may achieve the social optimum. Secondly, I identify a particular form of contract in the set of contracts which induce the socially optimal level of prevention. This contract is closed to an alternative risk transfer product referred to as the spread loss treaty.     

Environmental regulation, cost-benefit analysis, and the discounting of human lives

The loss of human life resulting from environmental contaminants generally does not occur contemporaneously with the exposure to those contaminants. Some environmental problems produce harms with a latency period whereas others affect future generations. One of the most vexing questions raised by the cost-benefit analysis of environmental regulation is whether discounting, to reflect the passage of time between the exposure and the harm, is appropriate in these two scenarios. The valuations of human life used in regulatory analyses are from threats of instantaneous death in workplace settings. Discounting, to reflect that in the case of latent harms the years lost occur later in a person's lifetime, is appropriate in these circumstances. Upward adjustments of the value of life need to be undertaken, however, to account for the dread and involuntary nature of environmental carcinogens as well as for higher income levels of the victims. By not performing these adjustments, the regulatory process may be undervaluing lives by as much as a factor of six. In contrast, in the case of harms to future generations, discounting is ethically unjustified. It is simply a means of privileging the interests of the current generation. Discounting raises analytically distinct issues in the cases of latent harms and harms to future generations. In the case of latent harms, one needs to make intra-personal, intertemporal comparisons of utility, whereas in the case of harms to future generations one needs to define a metric against which to compare the utilities of individuals living in different generations. Thus, the appropriateness of discounting should be resolved differently in the two contexts.     

农村环境保护法治建设的成就、问题和改进

文章总结了我国农村环境保护法治建设,分析了其存在的主要问题,提出了如下改进意见:明确农村环境保护法治建设的指导思想、基本理念和基本原则;建立健全农村环境保护监督管理体制,各级人民政府对所辖农村的环境质量负责,国家环境保护部是对全国农村环境保护实施统一监督管理的行政主管部门,发挥和依靠乡级人民政府和集镇管理委员会、村民委员会在农村环境保护方面的作用;合理确定农村环境保护法的适用范围和规制的主要领域;健全农村环境保护法律体系、法律制度和法律措施。     

论环境政策与环境法律的环境保护合力作用

我国的环境保护工作起步于环境政策,在建设法治国家进程中环境政策与环境法律的并存是客观实际的需要。环境政策和环境法律是我国保护环境的两种有效手段,二者有着共同的利益基础,二者并不矛盾,应当协调配合,共同发挥环境保护的合力作用。本文分析了环境政策与环境法律协调发展的理论基础,提出在现阶段环境政策和环境法律应当并存,进而提出正确处理环境政策与环境法律的协调配合关系。     

Agency dynamics of International Environmental Agreements: actors,contexts, and drivers

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics - The structural elements of global environmental governance are notoriously difficult to change and align with the needs of a...     

The Design of Environmental Regimes: Social Construction, Contextuality, and Improvisation

While much of the literature on environmental regimes has focused on effectiveness, this article takes a new look at a lesser-studied topic, the evolution of regime design. Understanding how regimes differ in design, and how various factors and processes shape such design, is important if we are to more carefully craft these regimes. We should also pay close attention to the formative role of social construction and context. Focusing on transboundary marine programs, we see that their designs basically follow a common template, namely that of the UNEP (United Nations Environmental Programme) Regional Seas Programme. However, the action of context (i.e., local actors and political processes) can modify these designs away from the common template. The extent to which these programs begin to differentiate from each other may be an important sign of program maturity and responsiveness to context. In this article, we examine a set of transboundary marine programs to uncover what the important dimensions of differentiation are. Then, we focus on one specific program, the SSME (Sulu-Sulawesi Marine Ecoregion) and closely trace how its specific form and organization came about. The analysis is informed by a model of institutional coherence that portrays institutions as the product of multiple generative mechanisms (e.g., social construction, ecological fit, and others). While it is premature to make definite judgments about the relative merits of competing regime designs, the work provides us with a new mode of analysis that can provide helpful directions for institutional assessment.     

环境法侵害排除和排除危害制度--从美、日、德相关诉讼制度的视角

美、日、德法院可以依据环境法适用侵害排除和排除危害责任。该适用大概分为两个阶段,即法律对危害事实存在的不合法性判断,以及法院对环境危害的不合理性判断。但我国环境法在侵害排除和排除危害制度方面存在缺失和不足,为完善我国侵害排除和排除危害制度,污染防治法应确认受害者、检察机关和环保公益性组织的排除危害请求权。