Document Type

Article

Disciplines

International Law

Abstract

In recent years, policymakers increasingly have recognized that implementation of existing environmental law is a significant area of concern that arguably is as important for effective environmental management as was the design of new legislation in the first place. Determining what actually happens when law is applied in practice is not always an easy matter. The potentially difficult task of assessing legislative results is made all the more complex by the fact that implementation is itself somewhat of a protean concept: it legitimately can encompass almost any official activity needed to ensure that legal measures have practical effect.

In the context of the type of environmental laws that typically are based on a "command and control" form of regulation, implementation can involve a broad range of administrative and legislative actions. For example, implementation could include the enactment of primary laws, the making of detailed regulations, the supply of technical and policy advice, and even the provision of adequate training of the legal and other professional staff involved in the application of the legislation in question. This article concentrates on one aspect of implementation, the process of enforcing environmental law, that is, the procedures and responses adopted by public authorities to handle suspected breaches of law. In particular, legal controls on hazardous wastes are considered.

Studies on the enforcement of pollution legislation based on empirical investigation have commenced only recently in the United Kingdom. In 1983, Genevra Richardson and others studied the regulation of trade effluent discharges into public sewers and produced the first major socio-legal analysis in the field.2 A year later a similar investigation by Keith Hawkins 3 concentrated on the control of discharges into rivers and other surface waters. Both works were concerned with environmental regulation by administrative organizations and centered on ten regional water authorities which currently are responsible for most aspects of water management in England and Wales.

The number of authorities and the scope of their internal structures is far greater in the field of hazardous wastes than in the field of water pollution, although similar themes on the practice of enforcement emerge. This leads to a wider variation of approaches in the enforcement of a single, common set of legal controls.

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