Unlocking Environmental Law

Unlocking Environmental Law is the essential introduction to this fascinating, controversial, and fast-moving area of contemporary law, ensuring that you grasp the main concepts with ease. Containing accessible explanations in clear and precise terms that are easy to understand, it provides an excellent foundation for learning and revising Environmental Law. Split into three parts, the book outlines the philosophical foundations of environmental law, and how these have influenced political decision-making. The information is clearly presented in a logical structure and the following features support learning, helping you to advance with confidence: • clear learning outcomes at the beginning of each chapter set out the skills and knowledge you will need to get to grips with the subject; • key facts boxes throughout each chapter allow you to progressively build and consolidate your understanding; • end-of-chapter summaries provide a useful check-list for each topic; •cases and judgments are highlighted to help you find them and add them to your notes quickly; • frequent activities and self-test questions and sample essay questions are included so you can put your knowledge into practice; • a brand new ‘critiquing the law’ feature is designed to foster essential critical thinking skills. Charting the development of regulations, examining emerging and future trends for environmental law, and looking at specific areas of law, including air pollution, climate change, laws around water, and the regulation of social and private space, this concise, accessible text is ideal for anyone new to environmental law.

The EPA was established to enforce the environmental laws Congress enacted during the 1970s. Yet today lethal toxins still permeate our environment, causing widespread illness and even death. Toxic Loopholes investigates these laws, and the agency charged with their enforcement, to explain why they have failed to arrest the nation's rising environmental crime wave and clean up the country's land, air and water. This book illustrates how weak laws, legal loopholes and regulatory negligence harm everyday people struggling to clean up their communities. It demonstrates that our current system of environmental protection pacifies the public with a false sense of security, dampens environmental activism, and erects legal barricades and bureaucratic barriers to shield powerful polluters from the wrath of their victims. After examining the corrosive economic and political forces undermining environmental law making and enforcement, the final chapters assess the potential for real improvement and the possibility of building cooperative international agreements to confront the rising tide of ecological perils threatening the entire planet.

This cutting-edge book invites readers to rethink environmental law and its critical role in ensuring a sustainable future for all. Illustrating narratives of successful developments in environmental law, contributors draw out key lessons and practices for effective reform and highlight opportunities by which we can respond to environmental challenges facing the planet.

A concise, clear, and legally rigorous introduction to international environmental law and practice covering the very latest developments.

A detailed overview of the law-and-economics methodology developed and employed by environmental lawyers and policymakers.

"This book was originally published as a monograph in the International encyclopaedia of laws/Environmental law."

The book provides a systematic and comprehensive study of the prevention principle in international environmental law.