Part IV - Mechanisms of Regulation I: Pollution Control

Summary

Preface to Part IV

In this Part we examine a range of different approaches to regulating for environmental protection. Rudimentary forms of regulation were developed in response to the pollution problems of industrialisation, and these provided the template for modern environmental regulation. In Chapter 8 we discuss both the Victorian origins of pollution control measures, and the development of the modern institutional architecture of pollution control. From the late 1960s, in response to the public and political attention turned to environmental matters, governments developed elaborate administrative systems and public law measures to control environmental degradation. Direct regulation by a government body was seen in many cases as the only rational government response to environmental degradation at this time – that a government response was required went almost without saying. It is this sort of direct government regulation, for example through a licensing regime backed up by criminal penalties, that most people have in mind when they think of ‘regulation’. The precise meaning of ‘regulation’ is, however, more problematic.

Chris Hilson, Regulating Pollution (Hart, 2000), p. 1

Regulation is an elastic concept. At its broadest, the term is used to refer to any governmental rules which seek to organise or control behaviour. On this view, traditional criminal laws on theft and so on might be regarded as regulation. However, this definition is too broad in the context of … pollution control. […]