Environmental Law

Citation

Bell, S., McGillivray, D., Pedersen, O. W., Lees, E., & Stokes, E. (2024). Environmental Law. Oxford University Press.

Chapter Summary

The book has twenty-one chapters over roughly 620 pages of text. The contents fall into three blocks. The first four chapters introduce the subject, the next seven deal with themes that cut across the whole field (international and EU law, regulation, enforcement, participation, access to justice and private law), and the last ten take particular fields one by one, from planning and environmental assessment to climate change, pollution, waste and biodiversity. The book is a textbook of United Kingdom environmental law written by an author team of five, and its last chapter turns to new technologies.

Chapters 1–2: What is Environmental Law? A Brief Introduction; History and Challenges

A short opening pair, about thirteen and nineteen pages, which set out what environmental law is and then place it in its history and in the challenges it faces.

Chapters 3–4: Environmental Values, Principles, and Rights; The Form, Function, and Administration of Environmental Law

Chapter 3, at about forty-three pages, deals with the values, principles and rights that underlie the subject. Chapter 4 turns to the form and function of environmental law and the way it is administered.

Chapters 5–6: International Law and Environmental Protection; The European Union and the Environment

Two chapters on the international and European layers of the subject.

Chapters 7–8: The Regulation of Environmental Protection; Environmental Crime and Enforcement

These chapters cover how the law regulates behaviour, and how it is enforced, including through criminal law.

Chapters 9–11: Public Participation; Access to Environmental Justice and the Role of the Courts; Private Law and Environmental Protection

The ways in which the public, the courts and private law claims figure in environmental protection. Chapter 11, about thirty-four pages, is the longest of the three.

Chapters 12–14: Town and Country Planning; Environmental Assessment; Environmental Permitting and Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC)

The first three field-by-field chapters cover the main systems of control over land development and industrial activity.

Chapters 15–19: Climate Change; Air Pollution; Contaminated Land; Water Pollution and Water Quality; Waste Management

Five chapters on specific media and problems. Chapter 15 on climate change is about twenty pages, and Chapter 16 on air pollution about sixteen; the chapters on contaminated land, water and waste are each close to thirty pages or longer.

Chapters 20–21: Biodiversity Protection; New Technologies

The last two chapters cover the protection of biodiversity, about forty pages, and the legal questions raised by new technologies.

Key Concepts

Foundations (Chapters 1–4)

• Values, principles and rights: the ideas that support environmental law and the way it is argued about.
• Administration: the bodies and procedures through which environmental law is applied.

Layers and tools of regulation (Chapters 5–11)

• International and EU law: the sources of law above the national level.
• Regulation and enforcement: how requirements are set, and how breaches are dealt with.
• Public participation and access to justice: the role of the public and the courts.
• Private law: civil claims as a route to environmental protection.

Fields of law (Chapters 12–21)

• Planning and environmental assessment: the controls over development and the assessment of its environmental effects.
• Permitting and IPPC: the permit systems for industrial activity.
• Media-based regimes: air, water, land and waste.
• Biodiversity and new technologies: the protection of nature and the legal response to technological change.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Broad but orderly coverage. Twenty-one chapters are grouped so that cross-cutting themes come before the individual fields, which makes the book usable both as a course text and as a reference to one field.
• Participation and justice are given chapters of their own. Public participation and access to environmental justice each have a chapter before the sector chapters begin, so they are not treated only as side issues.
• Includes recent fields. A chapter on new technologies and a separate chapter on climate change show an effort to keep the list of topics current.
• Authored by a team. Five authors share the chapters, which suits a book that must cover planning law, pollution control, international law and private law.

Limitations

• Length. At about 620 pages of text, the book is large for a first survey; most courses will select among the twelve sector and process chapters.
• Domestic focus. The book is organised around United Kingdom law within an international and EU context; it is not a comparative survey, and readers studying other legal systems will need separate sources.
• Uneven depth by field. Planning (about forty-one pages) and biodiversity (about forty-one) have considerably more space than climate change (about twenty) and air pollution (about sixteen), so students who need depth on climate law will need a specialist source.

Where It Fits in the Course

Of the environmental law books listed, this is the full-length textbook on the domestic framework. Holder and Lee's Environmental Protection, Law and Policy: Text and Materials is a text-and-materials book that takes a thematic approach with fewer chapters, and Bell et al. is the more complete sectoral reference to use alongside it. Sands and Peel's Principles of International Environmental Law is a treatise on the international level and goes much further than Bell's single chapter on international law; Mayer's The International Law on Climate Change does the same for climate. Lazarus's The Making of Environmental Law describes the development of American environmental law and is a comparative reading for students who want a view from another system.

For a UK-based course the usual path is to use Bell for the main framework, then Sands and Peel or Mayer for international detail.

How to Use This Book

The book is aimed at students on a first environmental law course, and at others who need a sector-by-sector guide to United Kingdom environmental law.

A practical reading plan:

• Core: Chapters 1–4 for the foundations, Chapters 7–8 on regulation and enforcement, and Chapters 12–14 on planning, assessment and permitting.
• According to the syllabus: Chapters 5–6 for the international and EU context, Chapters 9–11 for participation, justice and private law, and Chapters 15–21 for the field-specific topics.
• For revision: the introductory chapters on history and principles give the framework for essay questions.

Read the cross-cutting chapters before the sector chapters, and for each field note which regulator, which permit or consent and which form of enforcement applies. Check legislation and policy for each field before relying on the details, as the law changes.