Environmental Regulations and Laws: Should There Be More Enforcement?

Argument 1: Laws are Regulations Enhance Environmental Management

Various processes can be easily related to global environmental problems which include loss of biodiversity, global warming, climate change, and deforestation. 

Numerous global environmental problems such as climate changes, pollution,  global warming, deforestation, and loss of biodiversity are critically linked with the quality of life, issue of poverty, and loss of security of life. This study argues about whether or not there should be any regulation in the law for these issues which are destroying the environment. 

Argument 1

Laws are regulations enhances environmental  management

 

i. The effective enforcement of environmental regulations and laws are vital is very critical for environmental management. Regulation and legislation are only as excellent as their enforcement (Tosun, 2012). 

 

ii. India has comprehensive laws and regulation systems to enhance the health of its people and also protect its natural environment (Center for Science and Environment, 2019).

iii. Environmental laws are customary laws and a network of regulations dealing with the impacts of human actions on the natural environment (Unity College, 2019).

Argument 2

The laws are sometimes paradoxical.

 

i. The air pollution regulation in Australia has led to a paradoxical unlocking of the prescribed burns as well as other risk reduction approaches, albeit having the ability to mitigate air pollution in general. Burns can only be executed during the spring season.  The fires are more destructive during autumn and summer. They are more intense than the prescribed fires during his season (Jonathan, 2019).

 

ii. Environmental regulations and laws can also reduce productivity and employment in some amounts. This comes about when the industries producing pollutions are stopped (Unity College, 2019).

iii.Environmental regulations alleviate companies’ production costs and can thus reduce their productivity. This is because the regulations require firms to set up equipment that controls pollution (Gray, 2015).

Argument 3

It is not simple to implement environmental laws 

 

i. It is not commonplace for the enforcement or the application of environmental laws to be straightforward.  One of the major reasons behind this is that funds for the enforcement and implementation of these laws may be insufficient (Li & Liu, 2014). 

 

ii. It may also be complicated due to the lack of clarity on which branch of the agency is responsible for the implementation of a particular regulation (Oliva, 2015).  

 

iii. Political reasons may also contribute to the failure of the agency personnel to enforce the regulations (Environmental Biology, 2019).

Argument 4

Many companies do not consider their contributions to environmental pollution

 

i. Often, the polluting firms do not consider their contributions to their external or internal environmental damage during their decision-making process especially when there is not any legal rule which compels them to do so (Ambec et al., 2013).

 

ii. The main objective of the environmental law should force the polluters to internalize the damage extent on the environment. Legal rules are thus vital in the internalization process (Faure, 1995).

 

iii. The companies are in stiff competitions and are always focused on making profits rather than curtailing their negative impacts on the environment (US EPA, 1999).

Argument 5

The applications of the laws have been effective

 

i. Enacted laws are beneficial in making lasting differences as well as raising awareness. For example, high-polluting cars are currently subjected to high levies in France.  This also includes the banning of plastics in many countries such as Thailand (World Economic Forum, 2020). 

 

ii. Environmental regulations have had positive impacts such as improvement of water quality , majorly in regions where they were dirty before the regulations (Mulyanto, 2018).

 

iii. The has been ameliorated health effects as a result of environmental regulations  especially in developed countries (Goldberg & Min, 2014).

Statement

The choice of the regulatory tool ultimately makes our perception of our problem biased. Some regulations can lead to the overlooking of other problems in favour of other problems. The regulatory tool choice impacts the aspects of the problem which gets more attention.  Therefore, the regulations should be implemented and with the exhaustive considerations of their limitations.