Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
New ways of thinking are emerging
All over the world, it is being increasingly acknowledged that gross national
product is an obsolete concept because it only measures the production
of a state that goes through the market and for which a price is paid. We
now recognize that well-being should be assessed more widely, consid-
ering environmental, social and economic sustainability factors. Creating
wider assessments of the well-being of states and regions will also help to
understand the importance of environmental protection in developing our
societies.
'Planetary boundaries' is another interesting approach that is gaining atten-
tion. The core of this approach is that through industrialization, all of the major
environmental changes have been caused by man. These changes, however, have
limits. If we exceed these planetary boundaries in nine sectors (ocean acidifi ca-
tion, ozone depletion, climate change, land and freshwater use, nitrogen cycle,
loss of biodiversity, atmospheric aerosol loading, POP compounds and heavy
metals), there is a serious risk of rapid and probably irreversible change. This is a
useful concept as it turns our attention away from individual issues or functions
towards a more holistic view of all the environmentally hazardous activities that
will inevitably reach their limit in various ways:
chemical pollution (not yet quantified)
climate change
ocean acidification
ozone layer loss
biogeochemical flow boundary
nitrogen cycle
phosphorus cycle
freshwater use
land use
loss of biodiversity
atmospheric aerosol loading (not yet quantified).
world. The global economy is changing the world at such a rapid rate that
international environmental protection is now regulated by multiple
administrative layers - not merely by states. It is likely that in the future, inter-
national environmental law will focus increasingly on the interaction of those
regulatory levels.
The new generation of international environmental law professionals is no
longer primarily concerned with transboundary environmental regulation.
Rather, the focus now is on how the various levels (international, regional and
national environmental law) can regulate a particular environmental problem,
how commercial policy actions can promote environmental protection, and
how soft-law organizations or general regulation can promote environmental
protection so that the principles of good governance are heeded (for example,
 
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