EG-Umwelthaftungsrichtlinie und deutsches Recht – Struktur der Richtlinie und Hinweise für die Umsetzung –

Der Beitrag untersucht die Struktur der Umwelthaftungsrichtlinie 2004/35/EG (UHRL) und analysiert den Gesetzentwurf zu deren Umsetzung, den das Bundesumweltministerium (BMU) am 4.3.2005 vorgelegt hat. Er erg?nzt den Beitrag von Führ/Lewin/Roller NuR 2006, 67 ff., der den auf die Biodiversit?t bezogenen Aspekten der Richtlinie gewidmet war. Es werden die zentralen Regelungen der Richtlinie beleuchtet, namentlich die Definition des Umweltschadensbegriffs, die Vermeidungsund Sanierungsvorschriften und ihr Verh?ltnis zu der Kostentragungspflicht des Betreibers sowie die Ausnahmetatbest?nde des Art. 8 Abs. 3, 4. Vor dem Hintergrund dieser strukturellen Analyse wird der Gesetzentwurf des BMU untersucht. Der Beitrag kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass der Gesetzentwurf grunds?tzlich geeignet ist, die Umwelthaftungsrichtlinie in deutsches Recht umzusetzen, regt aber Verbesserungen an und unterbreitet Empfehlungen für die erg?nzende Umsetzung durch die L?nder.     

Introduction to Jesse Burkhead Symposium

Government budgeting is one of the major processes by which the use of public resources is planned and controlled. To the extent that this is done well, governmental programs are brought increasingly to the service of its citizens, enhancing their material and cultural status.
The study of government budgeting is a study in applied economics—in the allocation of scarce resources. This study must look at operations and begin with organization and procedure, the routines which have been established for decision–making in government. It should extend to an examination of the influences, governmental and nongovernmental, that come to bear on the decision-making process.
Ours is both an organized society and a society of organizations. The significance of organization is nowhere more evident than in the public sector. Here organizational arrangements bring together the learning of all social scientists. The patterns for decision-making do not provide separate compartments for economic knowledge, for political knowledge, for social knowledge. These are merged in the organizational arrangements which have been established for the conduct of governmental affairs.1     

The market needs help: The disappointing record of home energy conservation

Energy conservation is widely considered to be the most promising solution to the nation's energy problems. The dominant public policy in this field has been to encourage conservation by decontrolling energy prices and relying on consumers to respond to price increases in ways that best meet their individual needs. This policy so far has led to only small reductions in energy use within the home, and even these reductions are only partly attributable to conservation behavior. Among the many obstacles to residential conservation that have come to light, a major one is the difficulty of predicting what savings will result from any specific investment in home energy efficiency. Ten years of experience after the 1973 oil crisis raises doubts about the feasibility of residential conservation as a short-term energy strategy, and suggests that new policies are needed to improve the operation of the market for conservation investment.     

Action oriented strategic planning: The concepts of infrastructure and functional domains

The problem is how to translate limited and uncertain knowledge about the future environment into operational strategic policy decisions. Because the strategic policy decisions must be made with a long time perspective in mind (10 to 10 years), planners tend to formulate strategies which are overly broad. A solution to the broad and uncertain approach is to employ a system that relys upon the use of the infrastructure. When the infrastructure is divided into permanent and complete societal functions, then specific opportunities can be presented to the organization. Examples of functional domains that may be relevant to strategic long-range planning are: industrial capabilities, pieces of legislation, regulation and training. Our knowledge about evolving world trends is usually available in functional terminology (i.e., the evolving “information society”, the “leisure society”, the “energy crisis”, and the “food crisis”, etc.) Knowledge about the future behavior of the Functional Domains may enable organizations such as governments and/or corporations, to create the required infrastructure for capitalizing on possible opportunities.