Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Table of EU legislation
- Table of international conventions
- Table of legislation
- Table of cases
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Part I Introduction: Law in Context
- 1 Environmental law in context
- 2 Genetically modified organisms: introducing a dilemma
- 3 Public participation in environmental decision making
- Part II The EU Context
- Part III The International Context
- Part IV Mechanisms of Regulation I: Pollution Control
- Part V Mechanisms of Regulation II: Controls Over Land Use and Development
- Index
1 - Environmental law in context
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Table of EU legislation
- Table of international conventions
- Table of legislation
- Table of cases
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Part I Introduction: Law in Context
- 1 Environmental law in context
- 2 Genetically modified organisms: introducing a dilemma
- 3 Public participation in environmental decision making
- Part II The EU Context
- Part III The International Context
- Part IV Mechanisms of Regulation I: Pollution Control
- Part V Mechanisms of Regulation II: Controls Over Land Use and Development
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Recent decades have seen questions of environmental protection become a significant issue for government, and part of mainstream public debate. Most jurisdictions now have government departments and independent agencies dedicated to environmental protection, as well as public interest groups committed to raising the profile of environmental issues. Whilst the need for environmental protection is virtually uncontroversial, however, the reasons for protecting the environment are rarely spelt out; in turn, and as foreshadowed in the Preface to this Part, the meaning of environmental protection, and the best way of achieving environmental protection, retain potential for real conflict.
Graham Smith, Deliberative Democracy and the Environment (Routledge, 2003), pp. 1–3
Value conflict is at the heart of environmental politics. Decisions that affect the environment are typically multi-faceted: when reasoning about the non-human world, individuals and groups often find themselves pulled in contradictory directions, appealing to values that they find difficult to reconcile …
The environmental movement itself can be understood as being born out of value conflict, a conflict with interests in society that did not recognise or give sufficient attention to environmental values. Greens have challenged the values associated with the idea of progress based on ever-increasing levels of economic growth on the grounds that it represents a failure to consider the full range of values that we associate with the environment. […]
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Environmental Protection, Law and PolicyText and Materials, pp. 9 - 60Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007