Operation Mechanism Of Modern Environmental Law

Looking at the big picture of the development of environmental laws, we observethat it is of a progressive history and out of nothing. During this long course, severalmechanisms for the environmental protection have been gradually emerged, such asadministrative mechanism, economic incentive, private law mechanism and publicparticipation. The four mechanisms act respectively in four levels: thegovernment-control, market power, the afterwards relief, and the social mechanism.By supporting and complementing mutually, operating correspondently, they achieveto establish jointly the operation mechanism of the modern environmental law. As thefirst in the world to make the environmental legislation, UK is also one of the mostadvanced in it, and which has been improved by the development of EUenvironmental law. Appearing the core idea of the modern environmental law, UKenvironmental law and policy apply and innovate the various environmentalmechanisms.Chapter 1. Document Review. The documents related to the topic have beenoutlined in this chapter. The author explains the defects of the documents and theirbasic condition.Based on that, the main point of study of this article is established.Chapter 2. The outline review of history development of British environmentallaw. With the urban environmental pollution emerging in industrializing age in UK, itlegislated for the pollution-controlling consequently, and became one of the earlieststates who made the environmental law. The main environmental means were thecommand and control at that time, and assisting with the private law relieves, theenvironmental nuisance law had developed. But early environmental law concentratedon pollution control and public health, and it was characterized with local legislationfirst, while the state behind, inactive response, and legislation isolated and separated, etc. Inheriting and evolving better from the early environmental law, in 20th century70s British modern environmental law which was beginning in the late 19th hadsignificant developments, had boom of the environmental law and control in Statelevel, united separated environmental managements, and emphasized on the novelenvironmental issues. For about thirty years, the means of the environmentalgovernance diversified, economic incentive been used extensively, and theenvironmental nuisance law has new developments as standing for the private lawprotection mechanism. The fragmentation of the environmental legislation tending tobe united, and the environmental management becoming from separation tointegration, the natural value of environments deserves respects, and theenvironmental protection is no longer the attachment of the personal propertyprotection. At the same time, along with the economic development, the newenvironmental problems raise new challenges in front of the environmental law.Chapter 3. Administrative Mechanism for Environmental Protection: theIntegration of Legal Policy and Department Management. Administrative mechanismfor environmental protection, which is efficient and direct and used to following thecommand & control pattern, is the earliest and most important method being adoptedfor environmental protection since the environment problems appeared. Itscharacteristic lies in the department management and one to one distributedenvironmental legislation for the chain of'legal policy -----managementdepartment-----environmental pollution'. As the deteriorating of the environmentproblems, the traditional environmental administration shows lots of problems, suchas too many policies from different departments, distributed environmental legislationand management by different departments, which lead to low efficiency andmechanism conflict in environmental protection. As a result, seeking the integration ofenvironmental administration, harmonization of environmental policies and integratedsystem for prevention and control become the aims for the reform of environmentaladministration in the environment legislation. Since the 1990s, especially after theLabor Party came to office in 1997, the institutional reform of the British government has focused on the department joined-up under the core of sustainable developmentand the integration of systems through legal policies in environment, such as theintegrated pollution control system. There a trend for the integration of environmentalpolicy and environmental administration in order to overcome the fragmentation oftraditional environmental regulation in environmental protection.Chapter 4. Incentive Mechanism for Environmental Protection. In dealing withthe relationship between environment and development, people accustomed to takeenvironmental protection as a kind of special activity drifting away from economicactivities, and separate the unity between them. Traditional environmental protectionexcessively relies on the command & control from the government, which hasbecomes a burden for the government and for the enterprises as well. In fact,environmental problems are closely related with the economy and are generated fromthe failure of self-regulation by economy mechanisms in specific areas. Therefore, theenvironmental management system should adapt to the market economy, improve thesingle system of command & control and make full use of economic incentivemeasures. Both the method of Command & control and the method of economicincentives have advantages and disadvantages. Based on an economic analysis on thetransaction costs and organizational costs, these two methods are complementary, andtherefore can not be separated. The two methods should be coordinated andcooperated, and we should take advantages of the functions of the government and themarket in order to jointly achieve the optimal allocation of environmental resources,which is also consistent with the theory of the mixed economy. After the proclamationof the Fifth EU Environment Scheme'Towards Sustainable Development', theenvironmental regulation model relying on means of command & control hasgradually been shifted by environmental regulation model relying on integratedenvironmental management. As a result, the integrated use of environmental taxes andother economic tools has become a main feature for member countries of EU inenvironmental regulation. This chapter tries to sort out the practices of economicmethods in environmental regulations in UK and EU from the perspective of researching on the effectiveness of the environmental regulation and theconsciousness for complying with environmental regulation measures, and mainlyfocus on analyzing the background and practice of these measures and understandinghow these measures to make up the defects in administrative regulations and howeconomic incentives to stimulate people to reduce pollution emissions consciously tomeet ,even exceed the benchmark for environmental regulation.Chapter 5. Private Law Relief for Environmental Protection: The Case ofNuisance. The private law relief has been one of the important systems ofenvironmental law since it mainly protects private interests and may motivate privatecitizens and groups to initiate law suits. As a common phenomenon, nuisance has along history in the UK and for its convenience and flexibility, the nuisance law is stillwidely applied in environmental issues and has become the important part of privatelaw relief for environmental protection. This part surveys the English nuisance systemby way of case analysis, including its various forms and general principles. Nuisanceis based on the Coase Theorem and is mainly divided into two forms: the privatenuisance and public nuisance. Those elements to be considered by the judge in aprivate nuisance case including place, nature, scope, the use of land by landowner andthe acts of the defendant. Public nuisance is regarded criminal act under somecircumstances which affects some people. Generally injunction is used by the judge toredress private nuisance while the relief for public nuisance is compensation. The useof property rule or liability rule depends on the transaction costs. In contrast to privatenuisance, trespass refers to direct interference with private rights or property rightswithout any legal basis.Chapter 6. Public Participation of Environmental Protection. As a wellfunctioning mechanism for enforcing environmental laws and policies, publicparticipation assists as well as runs through the other mechanisms. As this systemevolves, the scope of public has been extended to include not only natural persons, butalso other subjects, for example, the environmental groups. The public participationsystem consists of three foremost elements: free public access to environment information, the right to decision-making and resort to environmental law suit. Theaccess to environmental information in the UK went through for almost 150 yearsfrom secrecy to open with the following three stages: prohibition of environmentalinformation disclosure from the initial national environmental legislation till 1974;provision of registration of pollution information from 1980s to eraly 1990s;expanding of available information from late 1990s till now. Public participation indecision-making dated back to the 18th century when the ways for publicparticipation were incorporated into the urban and rural planning law. Publicparticipation in decision-making intends to influence governmental environmentallegislations, policies and decisions by various forms including pluralism participation,stakeholder'participation and review participation. Judicial review safeguards theright to resort to law in resolving environmental disputes.Chapter 7. The Legal Economic Analysis on the four modern environmental legaloperation system. Administrative mechanism and economic incentive are the drivingwheels for the modern environmental legal system. Administrative mechanismregulates (supervision) the behaviors mainly from the external through command andcontrol; whereas the latter from the internal by means of the market economicinducing. As the auxiliary drive wheels, private law mechanism and publicparticipation correspond with the driving wheels. The author tries to analyze the ruleof the four mechanisms operation according to the economics conception"institutional complementarity". Dividing the operation mechanism of the modernenvironmental legal system into two main parts: centralized execution mechanism anddispersing one. Superficially, administrative mechanism and private law mechanismboth belong to the centralized execute mechanism, and they are involved with thelegislation intensively. The participants should observe the rigorous legal procedures,and this is the dominant regulating mechanism; whereas economic incentive andpublic participation, being the dispersive execution mechanism, are not related to thelegislation directly, but can be the impetus through the microscopic individualuniversal behaviors, thereby the recessive regulating mechanism. As for the operation manner, administrative mechanism and private law mechanism should follow thecompulsory manner, and the controlled are obliged to subject to the instruction of thelaw; however, instead of issuing an order directly, but through altering themicroscopic individual incomes or costs due to the legal effects, economic incentiveand public participation will take the inducing manner to lead the microscopicindividual dispersive behaviors to reach the aim. Meanwhile, it will becomecomplementary between the economic incentive mechanism and the publicparticipation, so does between the administrative mechanism and the private lawmechanism.