Abstract
Environmental regulation is one of the most important subsets of social regulation. Regulation is a framework for implementing the rules adopted in society, and legal standards guarantee this framework. The purpose of this chapter is to explain the role of law as a facilitator of the executive structure of environmental regulation inappropriate conditions in line with social interaction. It also seeks to explain the importance of regulation. Regulation is one of the most important social standards and guarantees the strong implementation of legal obligations in society. This fundamental standard has been established in public law and seems to be an important approach to protecting the environment and citizens' adherence to environmental obligations.
TopIntroduction
One of the basic tasks of governments is to regulate public affairs through regulation. Regulation is a tool or process that can largely reflect the mechanisms of government involvement and intervention in social affairs. However, the progress and achievements of regulation in recent years have led to the extension of regulation logic from economics to other areas such as the environment, labor and employer relations, consumer protection, etc.
Regulation regulates all social spheres and mechanisms of social control, whether conscious, intentional, or unintentional. Regulation can include any attempt by the government to influence human behavior. It is often claimed that we live in an age of “regulatory government.” In other words, regulation is the developed part of the modern government (Kiss & Shelton, 1997).
Social regulation forces individuals and companies, or lower levels of government, to take certain measures to improve public welfare. In a law-abiding society with a free system, social frameworks are established by considering citizenship situations. This means that the decisions of the general public can implement economic, social, cultural, health, political and environmental tools, and government interventions are less visible and, if they exist, are more to facilitate matters. In this regard, one of the most important social levels is environmental protection and public health, and having a healthy environment. In this way, to achieve the goals in the framework of law-abiding citizen relations, the originality of this is important in the light of customary rules and norms. However, environmental regulation indicates the need for civil society to adopt a social regulation approach. Although regulation takes place at various levels upstream, including the executive and the legislature, and sometimes beyond the decision-making powers, and sometimes intermediate, including the ministry or the directorate, in this process, environmental regulators, especially at the legislative level, play a role. They play a very important role(Kiss et al., 1991).
On the one hand, it seems that environmental regulation itself is a comprehensive framework and is at the top due to its great importance. On the other hand, we may look down on the environment and see this as a subset of social regulation. In any case, government interventions are justified despite social weaknesses. Despite all these issues, environmental regulation is important, politically, economically, culturally, and socially. In this regard, the aspect of environmental regulation legally leads us to examine the environmental effects. This chapter tries to deal with one of the important tools for resolving social and health, and environmental disasters from a legal perspective under environmental regulation.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Sustainable Development: Defined by the United Nations Environment Programme as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” sustainable development may be considered together with the concepts of “integration” (development cannot be considered in isolation from sustainability) and “interdependence” (social and economic development, and environmental protection, are interdependent). Laws mandating environmental impact assessment and requiring or encouraging development to minimize environmental impacts may be assessed against this principle.
Transboundary Responsibility: Defined in the international law context as an obligation to protect one's environment and prevent damage to neighboring environments, UNEP considers transboundary responsibility at the international level as a potential limitation on the sovereign state's rights. Laws that limit externalities imposed upon human health and the environment may be assessed against this principle.
Precautionary Principle: One of the most commonly encountered and controversial principles of environmental law, the Rio Declaration formulated the precautionary principle: In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of complete scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation. The principle may play a role in any debate over the need for environmental regulation.
Public Participation and Transparency: identified as necessary conditions for “accountable governments,... industrial concerns,” and organizations generally, public participation and transparency are presented by UNEP as requiring “effective protection of the human right to hold and express opinions and to seek, receive and impart ideas,... a right of access to appropriate, comprehensible and timely information held by governments and industrial concerns on economic and social policies regarding the sustainable use of natural resources and the protection of the environment, without imposing undue financial burdens upon the applicants and with adequate protection of privacy and business confidentiality,” and “effective judicial and administrative proceedings.” These principles are present in environmental impact assessment, laws requiring publication and access to relevant environmental data, and administrative procedures.
Polluter Pays Principle: The polluter pays principle stands for the idea that “the environmental costs of economic activities, including the cost of preventing potential harm, should be internalized rather than imposed upon society at large.” All issues related to responsibility for cost for environmental remediation and compliance with pollution control regulations involve this principle.
Prevention: The concept of prevention can perhaps better be considered an overarching aim that gives rise to a multitude of legal mechanisms, including prior assessment of environmental harm, licensing or authorization that set out the conditions for operation and the consequences for violation of the conditions, as well as the adoption of strategies and policies. Emission limits and other product or process standards, the use of best available techniques, and similar techniques can all be seen as applications of the concept of prevention.
Equity: Defined by UNEP to include intergenerational equity - “the right of future generations to enjoy a fair level of the common patrimony” - and intragenerational equity - “the right of all people within the current generation to fair access to the current generation's entitlement to the Earth's natural resources” - environmental equity considers the present generation under an obligation to account for long-term impacts of activities and to act to sustain the global environment and resource base for future generations. Pollution control and resource management laws may be assessed against this principle.