Contents

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ENV L REV 11 (2009) 69

Reforming Regulatory Sanctions - A Personal Perspective
Richard Macrory

Less than a decade ago, the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, initiated various studies examining ideas for substantial reform in the way the UK implemented and enforced environmental law. Environmental courts and tribunals figured highly, and I too was then involved in a study on the potential for civil penalties in the field of environmental law. It proved difficult to form a consensus even within the environmental law community for the institutional reforms that might be needed. But intellectually perhaps the biggest challenge was to justify why environmental law needed such special treatment. If specialist courts or civil penalties were a good idea for environmental law, why not health and safety, consumer law, and other areas of business regulation?

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ENV L REV 11 (2009) 75

The New Waste Directive - Trying to Do it All... An Early Assessment
Eloise Scotford

At the heart of ongoing debate over Community waste policy (and thus its regulatory form) is an unclear message about its goals, which include both ¿preventing¿ and ¿regulating¿ waste and, after a new Directive, maintaining high environmental standards for the use of resources generally. This article asks whether the new Directive is likely to resolve the tension that arises in determining which of these goals takes priority, or whether it perpetuates it. It answers this question by analysing the changes introduced by the 2008 Waste Directive and by examining its goals and the legal issues that arise from the Directive¿s efforts to clarify, simplify and reorient the provisions of previous Waste Directives.  The article concludes that the new Waste Directive is broadly and overly ambitious, at the expense of clarity concerning its goals and certainty in relation to its regulatory provisions.  In short, there is a lot to digest in legally understanding and appraising the new Directive.

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ENV L REV 11 (2009) 97

What¿s Cooking? From GM Food to Nanofood: Regulating Risk and Trade in Europe
Naomi Salmon

Focusing on the interests of the end-consumer, and using the emergent ¿nano-food¿ sector as the primary reference point, this paper provides a commentary on the efficacy of Community food safety law. Looking behind the public relations patter that peppers both industry and institutional commentaries, this investigation considers the particular challenges presented by food related applications of new technologies ¿ specifically nanotechnology. The aim of the analysis is to distinguish the rhetoric of ostensibly precautionary food safety law from the reality of market-led regulation in order to evaluate the consumer protective value of ¿economic precaution¿ in the uncertain world of contemporary food risks. Introducing the concept of ¿ethical precaution¿, the discussion concludes with a comment on the need for a more holistic and consumer-centric approach to the assessment and management of (uncertain) technological risks.

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ENV L REV 11 (2009) 116

The Climate Change Act 2008 - Will It Do The Trick?
Harriet Townsend

The Climate Change Act is only a very small part of this global picture. Nevertheless, if it succeeds in bolstering the case for an equitable global deal; if it gives Government the platform to make the policy decisions necessary to achieve the statutory targets it sets; and if it provides sufficient certainty and reassurance of this to businesses, individuals, and the public sector, so that they alter those millions of individual decisions that will between them be represented by the net UK carbon account, it may yet prove to be important. It may yet prove to be a powerful affirmation of our desire, and our ability, to do the right thing.

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ENV L REV 11 (2009) 122

Human Rights Challenges and Adequacy of State Responses to Natural Disaster
Mark Stallworthy

The extent of the relevance for environmental protection purposes of notions of human rights, particularly as conceived under the European Convention, and as further elaborated under UK law within the Human Rights Act 1998, remains contested territory. For instance, rights formulations tend to reflect those manifold anthropocentric interests which in their traditional exercise only exceptionally pay regard to any wider needs of ecological justice. From value based perspectives, human aspirations, investment expectations, and even political timelines, remain stubbornly short term. It can be further argued that, instrumentally, in the context especially of resolving environmental disputes through challenges of a fundamentally public law character, recourse to the Convention is inappropriate given the need to engage collective rather than individual interests.

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Links to other issues

Volume 2 (2000) :   4

Volume 3 (2001) :   1   2   3   4

Volume 4 (2002) :   1   2   3   4

Volume 5 (2003) :   1   2   3   4

Volume 6 (2004) :   1   2   3   4

Volume 7 (2005) :   1   2   3   4

Volume 8 (2006) :   1   2   3   4

Volume 9 (2007) :   1   2   3   4

Volume 10 (2008) :   1   2   3   4

Volume 11 (2009) :   1   2   3   4

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