The international environmental law

Basic principles of ecological legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

The following shall be the basic principles of the ecological legislation of the

Republic of Kazakhstan:

1) providing for sustained development of the Republic of Kazakhstan;

2) providing for ecological safety;

3) ecosystem approach in the regulation of ecological relations;

4) state regulation in the area of the environment protection and state regulation in the area of the use of natural resources;

5) Duty of preventive measures for prevention of pollution of the environment and infliction of damage on it in any forms;

6) necessity of the responsibility for violation of the ecological legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan;

7) Duty of compensation of damage inflicted on the environment;

8) payable nature and permitting procedure of impact on the environment;

9) application of the most ecologically clean and resource-saving technologies in the use of natural resources and impact on the environment;

10) interaction, coordination and publicity of the activity of governmental bodies for the environment protection;

11) provision of incentives for subsoil users to prevent, reduce, and liquidate the contamination of the environment, reduce the wastes;

12) availability of ecological information;

13) providing for national interests in the use of natural resources and impact on the environment;

14) harmonization of the ecological legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan with the principles and rules of international law;

15) presumption of ecological hazard of the planned economic and other activity and Duty of the assessment of the impact on the environment and the health of population in the adoption of decisions on its performance.

Throughout history national governments have passed occasional laws to protect human health from environmental contamination. Prior to the 20th century there were few international environmental agreements. The accords that were reached focused primarily on boundary waters, navigation, and fishing rights along shared waterways and ignored pollution and other ecological issues. Beginning in the 1960s, environmentalism became an important political and intellectual movement in the West.

Following the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm in 1972, the UN established the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) as the world’s principal international environmental organization. Although UNEP oversees many modern-day agreements, it has little power to impose or enforce sanctions on noncomplying parties. Nevertheless, a series of important conventions arose directly from the conference, including the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes or Other Matter (1972) and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (1973).

There are often conflicting data about the environmental impact of human activities, and scientific uncertainty often has complicated the drafting and implementation of environmental laws and regulations, particularly for international conferences attempting to develop universal standards. Consequently, such laws and regulations usually are designed to be flexible enough to accommodate changes in scientific understanding and technological capacity. The Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer (1985), for example, did not specify the measures that signatory states were required to adopt to protect human health and the environment from the effects of ozone depletion, nor did it mention any of the substances that were thought to damage the ozone layer. Similarly, the Framework Convention on Climate Change, or Global Warming Convention, adopted by 178 countries meeting in Rio de Janeiro at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (popularly known as the “Earth Summit”), did not set binding targets for reducing the emission of the “greenhouse” gases thought to cause global warming.

In 1995 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was established by the World Meteorological Organization and UNEP to study changes in the Earth’s temperature, concluded that “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.” Although cited by environmentalists as final proof of the reality of global warming, the report was faulted by some critics for relying on insufficient data, for overstating the environmental impact of global warming, and for using unrealistic models of climate change. Two years later in Kyōto, Japan, a conference of signatories to the Framework Convention on Climate Change adopted the Kyōto Protocol, which featured binding emission targets for developed countries. The protocol authorized developed countries to engage in emissions trading in order to meet their emissions targets. Its market mechanisms included the sale of “emission reduction units,” which are earned when a developed country reduces its emissions below its commitment level, to developed countries that have failed to achieve their emission targets. Developed countries could earn additional emission reduction units by financing energy-efficient projects (e.g., clean-development mechanisms) in developing countries. Since its adoption, the protocol has encountered stiff opposition from some countries, particularly the United States, which has failed to ratify it.

Дата добавления: 2014-10-17