Document Type

Article

Disciplines

International Law

Abstract

The worldwide growth of interest in environmental protection is one of the most startling legal developments of the late Twentieth century. As recently as twenty-five years ago, the presentation of an environmental law panel at a symposium such as this would have been unimaginable. At that time, in neither East nor West was environmental law an important area of social concern or a topical area of interest to practical lawyers. Environmental protection was often paid lip service, but the reality was that it counted for little. Indeed, the question of tradeoff between environmental protection versus economic development, however inaccurate today, was not even worth asking - economic development was so clearly the more important social concern. The mere fact of this panel's existence shows clearly how much has changed.

Today, environmental protection concerns are deeply woven into the fabric of modern economic and political life. Both the European Community and the United States have established quite comprehensive environmental regulatory regimes, and virtually all the countries of Western and Central Europe have at least some regulation and many are quite comprehensive.1 Most nations now realize that environmental protection is no longer a marginal social concern. If further proof were needed, the worldwide problems of ozone layer depletion and global warming provide the clearest examples that failure to protect the environment now will have catastrophic consequences in only a few generations.

With an area as broad as environmental law, the problem in this symposium is to gain a point of focus. The other panels have been largely concerned with the principles and institutions needed to protect human rights, and it is tempting to phrase the question of environmental protection in similar terms. Shouldn't there be a human right to be free of harmful environmental pollution? Will not appropriate provisions in national constitutions and international law offer the needed protection? Viewed in this way, the pollution prevention focus of this panel appears too narrow and parochial. Shouldn't we be discussing the importance and legal status of grander "human environmental rights" rather than the more mundane topic of how to prevent or control pollution?

The problem with discussing, yet again, the right to be free from pollution is that the inevitable ringing endorsement is unlikely to be any more effective than its predecessors. 2 Protecting humans from environmental harm, and broader protection of the environment's ecosystems, ultimately require more than expression of fundamental rights. Effective environmental protection requires enforced legal rules to control pollution and, increasingly, incentives to prevent pollution where possible. Protection requires an immediate and detailed involvement with the production and consumption decisions in economic society much more than a broad statement of universal rights.

Traditional environmental law has been involved in the economy by making rules to control pollution. The articles in this panel are directed instead to the evolving new focus on preventing pollution. Pollution prevention, while important and timely for all systems of environmental protection regulation, is particularly timely now when the new and old nations of Central and Eastern Europe are rebuilding their economies. This introduction will trace the evolution of modern environmental policy thinking from human rights to pollution control to pollution prevention.

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