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Environmental Law

The Environmental Law is designed to study or development of legal rules concerning the understanding, protection, use, management or restoration of the environment in all its forms, terrestrial, freshwater and marine natural and cultural, even non-terrestrial (space law).
It is a right technical and complex, local and global (European Law of the Sea, international ...) expanding, whose fields tend to densify as and measurement of social progress, scientific and technical. There is a growing number of countries embodied in a code of the environment, but without special court to date (there is no judge of the environment, as there may be a judge for children, specialty or criminal, anti-terrorism, etc.).. Judges and courts rely on experts agreed, and also approved laboratories. In some countries there are police, customs or Coast Guard with a specialty environment.

The UN and several of his partners created ECOLEX , a gateway to environmental law worldwide.

Summary

Elements of definition

The environmental law is a fundamental right and transverse. The right to a healthy environment is very new in modern culture (it was mainly developed in the 1970s). This right is enshrined in the Charter of rights of some industrialized countries. It applies to many sectors of the environment and human biophysics. Developed at different scales and legal systems , the result of a specific history, the environmental law covers the hierarchy of standards including international law , in Community law and national law or local.

The interaction of these three beams is growing with the rise of globalization, economic, political, social and environmental issues that accompany them, including climate change , the sustainable development , but issues related to emerging problems posed by such by biotechnology , , the endocrine disrupters or light pollution .

In addition to its normative aspect, imposing obligations of public policy - compared to the hard law or hard law, the right environment can also take the character of soft law , without imposing any legal obligations but fair standards behavior recommended to players of law. It is also one of the scope of proactive prevention principle and the precautionary principle and notions of impact of measures , countervailing measures and environmental responsibility and ecological debt repayment. He questions and is questioned by the environmental ethic , the right to health ( environmental health ) and the emerging right of future generations.

The problem of the necessary implementation of international environmental law has crystallized since the 1990s around the Rio Summit and its conventions and international declarations. Indeed, in the field of environment, the commitment of states and communities is complex and depends on many parameters that international law should be able to predict or frame .

Different sub-branches

The Environmental Law and combines different approaches for different sub-branches that make the lives of environmental lawyers:

  • Those related to components of the environment : the right of the air , - the right of the water and Wed , law of land , right of the biodiversity and habitats ;
  • Those related to human activities: the right to hunt , the fishing , the energy ;
  • Those relating to harmful or polluting activities: the right sound , right of classified installations (formerly facilities), Law, sanitation , law major hazard industrial or natural;
  • Those related to a particular object: Right Conservation (now including in some countries the protection of the environment night against light pollution, chemicals law, law of waste , law sites, monuments , etc. ;
  • Those related to an economic sector which is affixed its own environmental legal issues: agriculture and environment, industry and environmental services and environment. Declination can go to infinity by Subsector: fish farming, nuclear, tourism, health and environment etc.. ;

Often contrasted as they are artificially complementary right of nature protection and the fight against the pollution and nuisance.

Each time, for each of its sub-branches, the environmental law comes under the legal system that asks: local / national / international community including the right for Europe, for example with Community law the environment.

This interaction is also vis--vis other branches of law at the instance of criminal law , the commercial law of business law , the tax law and then we will discuss the environmental criminal law example or by crossing the two sub-categories mentioned above as an example of EU criminal law environment.

It will be understood as the extreme technicality of environmental law at the crossroads of many other legal disciplines, and evolving rapidly.

In France, it is now framed by an environmental code ( See the code of the Environment ).

Chronology of International Environmental Law

The international law of the environment includes more than 300 agreements or multilateral treaties excluding bilateral agreements. It is the result of a long history which is traced by some benchmarks.

The first Earth Summit

  • June 16, 1972: World Conference on Environment in Stockholm that led to the Stockholm Declaration: "Man has the fundamental right to liberty, equality and adequate conditions of life, in an environment of quality allow him to live in dignity and well-being. He has the solemn duty to protect and improve the environment for present and future " ;
  • November 23, 1972: Convention on World Heritage (sometimes called the Paris Convention) under the auspices of UNESCO, which seeks to protect the cultural and natural heritage of universal value, the sites are listed in the "World Heritage List "The state party undertakes to not destroy them. So it's just a label.
  • 1972: Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of waste , commonly called the London Convention
  • March 3, 1973: Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of wild fauna and flora endangered or Washington Convention, sometimes known as CITES (Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species). Regulates the trade of plants and animals alive or dead by three annexes: I) species which are not subject to commercial movements; II) species may be the subject of trade flows with CITES export permits and controlled population ; III) species may be the subject of trade flows with only an export permit. The EU imposes more stringent provisions.
  • 1975: Treaty of the Rio Uruguay , which establishes a mechanism for information and public consultation , sometimes presented as a precursor to the establishment of these mechanisms of participatory democracy in environmental law.
  • 1976: Council of Europe's European network of biogenetic reserves.
  • April 2, 1979 (EU): Directive 79/409 EEC called Birds Directive : means special protection areas for birds are rare or threatened.
  • June 23, 1979: Bonn Convention on Migratory Species grouped in a list attached. Signatory states should promote the research on migratory species, to provide immediate protection to species listed in Annex I (eg Balaenoptera) conclude international agreements for the species in Annex II (eg gazelle).
  • September 19, 1979 (Council of Europe) Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats of Europe , also known as the Berne Convention, it regards the EU and other European states and states non-members but covered by some migratory species such as Senegal, Burkina Faso. Objective: Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats of Europe. means: 500 plant species and 580 animal species protected: Plants: logging ban, picking and uprooting + intentional habitat protection, wildlife: prohibition of capture, habitat destruction, disturbance, marketing, except the only protected species. This convention has four appendices listing the degree of protection of species (fauna or flora).
  • December 10, 1982: UN Convention on the Law of the Sea came into force in 1994
  • March 22, 1985: Vienna Convention on the Protection of the Ozone Layer , ratified in 1986, establishing a framework for preparing the Montreal Protocol
  • 1986: moratorium on whaling
  • September 1987: Montreal Protocol in place to eliminate substances that deplete the ozone layer, statements pledging to ban CFCs to a deadline
  • 1988: creation by the UN 's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
  • March 22, 1989: Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal , which came into force in 1992. This agreement aims to reduce the flow of waste dangerous in the country, particularly to developing countries.

Earth Summit in Rio

  • May 22, 1992: UN Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit) in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) organized by the UN, the largest intergovernmental conference ever held that devoted to general principles which are now common language as part of the sustainable development and has led include:
  • June 17, 1994: UN Convention on the fight against desertification , which entered into force in 1996
  • September 22, 1995 Ban Amendment to the Basel Convention which bans the export of hazardous wastes from OECD countries to developing countries. Not entered into force . This amendment inspired the creation of regional conventions such as the Bamako Convention of 1996.
  • 1996: Convention on Liability and Compensation for Damage in Connection with the Carriage of Hazardous and Noxious Substances, Convention called "HNS Convention" not effective
  • June 25, 1998: Aarhus Convention or Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters.
  • September 10, 1998: Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides are subject to international trade (PIC Convention itself, Prior Informed Consent)
  • April 12, 1999: International Convention for the Protection of the Rhine , extending the action of pollution to the sustainable management of water, preventive flood and flood ...
  • 2000: Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety Biotechnology
  • May 22, 2001: Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants , an agreement to ban certain pollutants
  • February 2005: Entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol (it should create conditions binding)

In the European Union

In 1994 , the Council of Europe, to help countries (including new entrants and countries in Central and Eastern Europe) to strengthen their environmental legislation has produced a document type that is a model national legislation, which may possibly be adapted to regional level for federal countries, called "Model Law on Environmental Protection" .

Environmental regulation is directly and indirectly, an important part of European regulations, which itself derives mostly from international treaties and should be reflected in legislation of member states (The law determines the early 2000s 80% the national legislation of the 27 EU Member States including France) and this trend is born of the Treaty of Maastricht (1992), developed with the Treaty of Amsterdam ( 1997 ) and increased further after Earth Summit in Johannesburg ( 2002 ), allowing a gradual alignment of environmental law in Europe, accompanied by an action of the major lobbying firms, and nongovernmental organizations , seeking in particular to limit environmental inequalities and distortions of competition that the uneven application of these rights may induce.

Today, large companies most often involved in the preparation of European legislation. On the environment in particular, interest groups ( NGOs ...) and lobbies (industrial) take an important part in this preparatory work, which takes place after a proposal from the European Commission , on advisory committees. This work enables the development of green papers and white papers.

Examples of white papers :

  • Environmental Responsibility, February 2000 ,
  • Policy strategy in the field of chemicals, in February 2001.

Example of Green Paper:

These general guidelines are then used to develop guidelines , which must be transposed into national laws of Member States of the European Union , and regulations , which are applied directly. Under the hierarchy of the Community law principle prevails over national laws of member states.

Examples:

etc..

Moreover, governments are required to provide environmental information upon request of citizens (in Europe under the Aarhus Convention Directive 2003/4/EC ). This provision applies to varying degrees according to national laws.

In practice, the "constraints" environmental impact hard on the innovative technology. An office in charge of Seville is to provide companies the best available technology for solving an environmental problem. The REACH Regulation , for example, leads to apply this type of process in the case of chemicals.

The big companies are better prepared for this transformation (sometimes they helped to initiate) the small and medium enterprises that often leave a surprise, especially because the structure of environmental monitoring and legal. States or France, the network of Chambers of Commerce and Industry ( ACFCI ) thus contribute, through counsel, Agencies (eg ADEME in France) and portals of environmental monitoring (eg Enviroveille ) for SMEs, to inform them of changes in environmental constraints and new solutions.

France

The environmental law is a right cross to the relatively new legal science

Cross, he traveled more than fifteen existing codes and combines aspects of public law and private law. Modern law, technical and complex it is subject in France of a particular code called the Code of Environment (France) , entered into force by Order of September 18, 2000 .

Its recognition is probably due to the creation of the Ministry of the Environment in 1971.

But initiatives such as the Law on National Parks in 1960 and the Water Act of 1964 have made significant advances for the slow recognition of the environment in France , later against other Western countries.

Historically, the first acts of public health of the cities of the Middle Ages or even in Gallo-Roman towns were perhaps the first signs of this right is limited to the concept of administrative police under the administrative law. Note first text as possible in the Environmental Law French, an imperial decree of 1810 which subjected to prior authorization on the workshops may cause inconvenience to the neighborhood (3 possible classes of authorization). This decree was applied to the law of 19 December 1917 which replaced the 3rd class with the concept of statement. Reform Act Barnier 1995 restored the environmental law his first general principles of the Code (art. L 110-1, L. 200-1 of the former Rural Code).

The environmental law has had a consecration with the constitutional charter of the environment , wanted by Jacques Chirac and promulgated on 1 March 2005 by Congress. This creates a third generation human rights (after the subjective rights of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789 and the social and economic rights of the Preamble to the Constitution of 1946), whose consequences Legal is still uncertain. Future case law will show whether this right to be a right environment is sufficiently precise to be spent by the courts. A first step has been taken in this direction by the injunction issued parole April 29, 2005 by the Administrative Court of Chalons en Champagne, called Teknival jurisprudence, which for the first time, recognizes "the right to a healthy and balanced "The quality of basic freedom.

Finally, the Grenelle Environment Forum has been the subject of two laws: the ' Grenelle 1 ', adopted by Parliament in 2008, sets the broad objectives of the French environmental policy, the " Grenelle 2 "being adoption, in turn puts in place the evidence in the first text. The latter is the subject of much criticism, like those issued by the federation of France Nature Environment (FNE), which had participated in preparatory discussions, or that of the independent researcher Jean-Christophe Mathias , who sees the expression of liberal law Environmental Republican opposition to a right of nature which would, in his view, the only way to initiate a real public policy of protecting and restoring the national territory .

The French production of legal norms in the field of environment also depends on the standards that are higher, namely:

  • the international law of the environment (more than 300 multilateral treaties or conventions besides bilateral agreements) and may also take the character of soft law , without imposing any legal obligations.

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