Regulating environmental protection

Regulation is still the core instrument of environmental policy. Legislation for environmental protection concentrates on standards, bans, permits and quotas and, in some cases, specification of technologies or technical standards to be used in industry. These instruments have long been favoured because they promise certainty of outcome.

The industrialized countries enacted a 'first generation' of legislation in the 1960s and 1970s, aimed principally at protecting human health from the impacts of air, water and soil pollution. In the 1990s, many countries reformed their sectoral environmental approaches into better integrated strategic policies. Comprehensive environmental protection laws are now in place in the newly industrializing countries and other developing countries.