Environmental Law — meaning and purpose

A factory beside a creek in Taloja is pumping out coloured water. The residents can complain to the ward office, write to a newspaper, or go to a lawyer. Which law do they invoke, who can shut the factory down, and what happens to the creek afterwards? Environmental law is the set of rules that answers those three questions: what is forbidden, who enforces it, and who pays for the damage.

In two minutes

Environmental law is the body of constitutional provisions, statutes, rules, court decisions and international commitments that protects the environment by preventing, controlling and abating pollution, conserving natural resources, and giving remedies and compensation when harm is done.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Environmental Law on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.