About the Book
This book traces the evolution of environmental principles from their origins as vague political slogans reflecting fears about environmental hazards to their embodiment in enforceable laws. Environmental law has always responded to risks posed by industrial society but the new generation of risks have required a new set of environmental principles, emerging from a combination of public fears, science, ethics, and established legal practice. This book shows how
three of the most important principles of modern environmental law grew out of this new age of ecological risk: the polluter pays principle, the preventive principle, and the precautionary principle. Since
the first edition was published, the principles of polluter-pays, prevention, and precaution have been encapsulated in a swathe of legislation at domestic and international level. Courts have been invoking environmental law principles in a broad range of cases, on issues including GMOs, conservation, investment, waste, and climate change. As a result, more States are paying heed to these principles as catalysts for improving their environmental laws and regulations. This edition will
integrate to a greater extent the relationship between environmental principles and human rights. The book analyses new developments including the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, the case law of the
European Court of Human Rights, which has continuously carved out environmental duties from a number of rights enshrined in the European Convention of Human Rights, and the implementation of the UNECE Convention on Access to Information.
Table of Contents:
1: General Introduction
Part I: The Polluter-Pays, Prevention, and Precautionary Principles: Three Approaches To Environmental Risk
2: Introduction
3: The Polluter-Pays Principle
4: The Principle of Prevention
5: The Precautionary Principle
6: Part I Conclusions
Part II: The Legal Status and Role of the Polluter-Pays, Preventive, and Precautionary Principles: A Shift From Modern to Post-modern Law
7: Introduction
8: Theoretical Presentation of Modern and Post-modern Principles
9: The Evolving Function of Environmental Directing Principles in the Transition From Modern to Post-modern Law
10: The Legal Status of the Directing Principles of Environmental Law: From Political Slogans to Normative Principles
11: Environmental Directing Principles Versus Free Trade
12: Part II Conclusions
Final Conclusions
About the Author :
Nicolas de Sadeleer is professor and Jean Marie Chair at Saint-Louis University (Brussels). He is a specialist of EU law (institutions, internal market), environmental law (international and domestic) and comparative law. He is an active commentator on EU legal and political issues in the areas of trade, investment, and sustainable development. In addition to holding guest academic positions at over forty universities around the world, he has been the recipient of
five international university chairs.
He has worked as a lawyer and as consultant with national and international authorities on a wide range of environmental issues. His research has been published with leading scholarly publishing houses and journals around the globe.
Review :
One cannot deny the value of the presented monograph as a comprehensive and extremely interesting study of the issues of the three principles that are key to environmental law.
De Sadeleer reveals new nuances not previously presented in other monographs dealing with environmental law and offers a new approach to understanding it. In particular, the considerable space dedicated to the precautionary principle provides essential reading for anyone wishing to investigate its implementation. De Sadeleer's display of knowledge and command of the subject matter is impressive.
This book has a rare level of conceptual insight and tremendous analytical rigour. The author demonstrates a full command of both legislation and case law, whilst at the same time proposing an original reading and understanding of how environmental principles operate in the current labyrinthine and ever-changing panorama of environmental regulation
One of a kind, de Sadeleer's book, not only contributes to high quality environmental law scholarship, it enhances the quality of legal research in the still growing field of environmental law, and is capable of providing environmental law researchers, legal professionals, the judiciary, law students and other interested in environmental law, with a solid understanding of the three environmental principles: the polluter-pays, the prevention, and the precaution principles, and how they have developed from political slogans to legal rules, and continue to evolve against the environmental challenges of the present times.
All in all, the book of Nicolas de Sadeleer is a very useful and exhaustive source of information for any environmental lawyer. The environmental principles are interpreted in such a way to make them an important basis to reinforce environmental law. The book makes the reader think in different ways and is an invitation to leave traditional legal pathways.
De Sadeleer's book is not only a must-have reference for anyone wishing to deal with the subject matter, but also has the merit of giving food for thought on a multitude of topics. The author carves out a system of principles covering the whole discipline of environmental law, which was hitherto missing. After reviewing the various principles in the literature and in the case law, De Sadeleer delves in particular into three of them the polluter-pays, prevention, and precaution, which, in his view, overcome the fragmentation of environmental law.
In particular, N. de Sadeleer analyses how the precautionary principle is being implemented and influencing more and more legislation as well as case law. The chapter on this principle is a real stimulus to further thinking. This in-depth theoretical analysis is complemented by concrete illustrations. Thus, the role of science in the context of the application of the precautionary principle is intensively discussed.
The importance of this book on Environmental Principles in the context of the risk society and the global ecological crisis cannot be overstated. Anyone who wants to grapple with all the numerous legal questions raised in this book, its argumentative richness, the numerous illustrations, the accurateness of the analyses, will have to read and re-read it. I can, however, guarantee that the reading will certainly be pleasant and fruitful. The reader will be left with the feeling that he has enjoyed an extraordinary book on Environmental Law, but also, more generally, that he has read a remarkable example of the role played by legal science in the new post-modern era.
It is impossible to summarise in a few lines the rich and powerful analytical content of a book that opens up new venues and perspectives in the study of legal-environmental issues. Professor de Sadeleer, in his generous and masterful effort to systematise the advances and setbacks of environmental protection through the law, offers us a vast repository of knowledge that is essential reading.
Reviews from previous edition
This book is a formidable feat of legal scholarship ... likely to remain a milestone for years to come and one which no-one working in this field can ignore.
De Sadeleer's Environmental Principles is a tour de force, a showpiece of legal as well as contextual analysis, a constant proof of the author's sharp intellect, a reference book.
... impressively-researched ... This book can be warmly recommended to anyone with an interest in the theory, development and practical working of environmental law ... it is well written and logically structured, with clear section headings as useful signposts to the direction of argument.
The book represents a step forward in the theory of the nature and functions of the environmental principles communicating rather complex concepts. The analyses are original, important and largerly convincing and deserve attention. The book can strongly be recommended to environmental academics.
