Environmental Policy

Environmental Policy

Environmental Justice Movement

The emergence of the concept of "environmental justice", appeared very recently in Europe, marks the evolution of thinking the global justice movement that introduces the link between social criticism and ecological criticism, hitherto remained highly compartmentalized. Indeed, environmental crisis and social crisis are two sides of the same problem: the productivist and consumerist model that generates social inequality and environmental degradation.

The issue of environmental justice has two basic variations: one, historical, American concerns in residential areas where it was discovered the existence of pollutants are particularly harmful to the population, from there, then started a protest movement for environmental justice, i.e. the request compensation, removal of the pollutant source, the process responsible for the damage, and a declination. More recently, Third World sees the removal of valuable environmental resources from marginal environments inhabited by ethnic groups a clear violation of human rights; arising from this national and international protest movements of varying fortune (Lazarus, 2004).

The common law is the source of many principles found in environmental law today. It provided pre-existing forms of action and legal method that could be adapted into usable forms of redress to tackle environmental problems. It is even possible to trace the beginnings of environmental law as far as back as medieval times. Eighteenth-century actions in nuisance and trespass formed the basis for environmental protection. The case law explored the boundaries of trespass and property law, particularly in the context of rights.

Environmental Policy

The twenty-first century finds environmental law in transition. This is perhaps unsurprising: our environmental impacts and environmental knowledge are never static and continually invite new solutions. In fact, until relatively recently environmental law was ill-defined: indeed it was often not treated as a subject in its own right. Today the importance of environmental law is well recognized beyond the legal community ...