Environmental Protection - Essay Example

Environmental Law Environmentalism is the twentieth century’s most important social movements. It is a complex of external factors to say the very least. Environment means surroundings especially the conditions, which effect people’s lives. We often use the term to mean our natural surroundings. These include the biosphere, the hydrosphere and the atmosphere. The environment can be natural but it can also be made by people, but in some areas of the world the environment has been damaged by the people due to which Environmental Law was created which is a system of complex and interlocking statutes, common law, treaties, conventions, regulations and policies which seeks to protect the natural envoirnment which may be affected, impacted or endangered by human activities, some of these laws are The National Environmental Policy Act (passed in 1970), Environmental Quality Improvement Act, the Environmental Education Act, and the Environmental Protection Agency. The main objective of these was to assure that the environment be protected against both public and private actions that harms the eco-system. Professor Christopher D Stone, also argued and wrote a lot of books on the envoirnmental condition.Christopher Stone studied from Harvard University and then went to Yale Law School as he was mostly intersted in the envoirnment law he took subjects like Control of Organizational Behavior, International Environmental Law, Law and Social Change Law, Language and Ethics, Natural Resources Law, Public International Law, and he was also an active participant in the, Law and Society Association(Board of Trustees,1981-84), Board of Advisors, Animals and Culture Foundation Advisor, Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development (London),Trustee, Center for International Environmental Law(CIEL), Associate Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (Task Force on Law). Christopher D Stone wrote a number of books relating to the environment out of which one was: “Should Trees Have Standing? Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects” The book was originally published in 1972; it immediately became a meeting point of the U.S. Environmental movement. In this important work, Professor Stone argues that special guardians be allowed to speak for the ‘voiceless’ elements in nature, in effect, to give legal standing in the court of law to endangered species and threatened forests. He stated that the trees and other elements should have their own legal rights because the trees help to control the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and these forests are also home to huge variety of plant and animal species. And due to cutting excessive trees not only animal or plant life is endangered but the human life is also endangered. In 1972, Christopher D. Stone argued that ‘We (should) give legal rights to forest, oceans, rivers and other… natural objects in the environment… indeed to the natural environment as a whole.’ While awaiting the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the Walt Disney-Sequoia National Forest matter in 1969, Stone lamented, ‘…if I could get the courts thinking about the park itself as a jural person… the notion of nature having rights would make a significant… difference.’ In 1969 when the US Forest Service had granted Walt Disney Enterprises a permit to construct a $35 million resort complex in Mineral King Valley, located in Californias Sierra Nevada Mountains the court declared that, “the rights to sue does not inure to one who does not possess it, simply because there is no one else willing and able to assert it." At that time Christopher Stone realized that if standing was the barrier then why not choose the wilderness area, so he wrote an article on trees and later wrote the book. Relating to his book he stated that “the critical question of "standing" would be simplified and also put neatly in focus if people, allowed environmental issues to be litigated...in the name of the inanimate object about to be despoiled, defaced, or invaded. ...Contemporary public concern for protecting natures ecological equilibrium should lead to the conferral of standing upon environmental objects to sue for their own preservation. See Stone should trees have Standing? ...This suit would therefore be more properly labeled as Mineral King v. Morton.” The book “Should Trees Have Standing? Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects” disagrees that although each successive movement to grant rights to rightless "entity" like trees; has first appeared "odd or frightening or laughable, The author proceeds to argue further for special guardians be given power to speak for the "voiceless" elements in Nature: in effect, to give "legal standing" to endangered species and threatened forests. Christopher Stone’s book is a common opening of focused thought on the legal rights of trees and other natural objects. According to him a man should be assigned with the guardian of the earth and those who are unable to speak and voice their needs. Most states have put on the responsibility of stewardship, some more than others, but none have stated clearly that nature or wildlife have a natural right within them to a rightful existence. The laws and policies, however, have been further informed towards a position as if nature had a right. This is the heritage of the 20th century ecology movement. In his book he has also stated that the actual control of improving principles on public policy is controversial. But efforts to repair the global environment invite principled analysis in three ways. First, there are issues of human obligations to the non-human environment ("environmental ethics”). Second there are issues of principles among nations in respect of the environment ("international ethics"). Third, there are issues of ethics among generations in respect of the environment ("inter-generational ethics"). Environmental law goes back and forth between the triple area of use, regulation and conservation, between the rights of nature and the rights of man, at once opposing and uneven. It is a combined bundle comprising of miscellaneous variety of laws, both legal as well as that, which emerges from the court, the combined efforts of governmental and judicial wisdom. Laws governing the protection and use of natural resources involve multiple area of concern – from water, air, forests, wildlife, hazardous substances and pollution to issues of land use, industry, mining, irrigation, town-planning, energy, agriculture, waste, health and intellectual property rights. They concern swamp and wilderness, the protection of fragile coastal areas, monitoring the purity of water and air and, fundamentally, the traditional rights of the local communities and the extension of cultures. In this vast legal framework, protection laws form but a miniscule cluster of acts, rules and notifications, but having a far-reaching impact upon the lives and livelihood of the people dependant upon these resources. Christopher D Stone’s books have a classic place of focused thoughts on the legal rights of the trees and other natural objects. The author reviews and critically reviews these and related issues that have been frequent in international environmental governance bodies and literature. According to Christopher Stone the tradition should go one and that people should not take trees as something which is lifeless because they can give us a lot of benefits, the tropical rainforests and trees control the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere making it clean for the humans and these forests are also home to huge variety of plants and animal species, and because of peoples carelessness the rate of land supporting forests is reducing very fast because trees have been felled for timber and to free land for cattle ranching. People should be more conscious of the need to protect the natural environment and to preserve the balance of the biosphere where we all live. BIBLIOGRAPHY Stone, Christopher 1972, “Should Trees Have Standing? Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects”, www.elibrary.com Word Count: 1,251 Read More