Environmental Law

What is Environmental Law?
Feature of Environmental Law.
Function of Environmental Law.

Environmental Law

Environmental laws are the standards that governments establish to manage natural resources and environmental quality. The broad categories of “natural resources” and “environ- mental quality” include such areas as air and water pollution, forests and wildlife, hazardous waste, agricultural practices, wetlands, and land- use planning. 

Environmental law - or "environmental and natural resources law" - is a collective term describing the network of treaties, statutes, regulations, common and customary laws addressing the effects of human activity on the natural environment. The core environmental law regimes address environmental pollution. A related but distinct set of regulatory regimes, now strongly influenced by environmental legal principles, focus on the management of specific natural resources, such as forests, minerals, or fisheries. Other areas, such as environmental impact assessment, may not fit neatly into either category, but are nonetheless important components of environmental law.

Feature and Function of Environmental Law

- Establish regulatory structures for environmental management, including regulatory agencies such as the EPA and specialist courts and tribunals such as the Land and Environment Court of NSW.
    

- Enable regulators to manage environmental impacts using plans, policies, standards, licences and incentives.
    

- Require those proposing environmentally significant activities to obtain approval from regulators, such as development consent.
   

- Enable members of the public to take part in environmental planning and environmental assessment, such as through making submissions.
    

- Require activities of environmental significance to be assessed before permission can be granted, such as through an environmental impact statement.
    

- Provide administrative, civil, and criminal penalties for breaches of the law.
    

- Allow the legality of the decisions of regulators to be challenged by members of the public in appropriate courts.
    

- Allow the merits of certain decisions of regulators to be challenged by members of the public.
    

- Allow for third parties to enforce breaches of the law through court action.