Basic Concepts in Environmental Law

• Author: Jamie Benidickson
• Profession: Faculty of Law University of Ottawa
• Pages: 12-24

12

CHAPTER 1

BASIC CONCEPTS IN

ENVIRONMENTAL LAW

1 Environment Canada, The State of Canada’s Environment (Ottawa: Supply &

Services, 1991) at 1–1.

A. ENVIRONMENT

“People,” argued the authors of the State of Canada’s Environment

report in 1991, “have traditionally tended to view air, water, land,

other organisms, and themselves as separate components that could

each be understood in isolation from the whole.”1Such an assumption

is much less common today, although it has a continuing residual

influence in a variety of contexts, including law.

The way the term environment is interpreted or understood in legal

settings is directly linked to the scope of environmental protection.

Crudely stated, environmental protection legislation safeguards envi-

ronment as defined in that legislation and as interpreted by the courts

in the light of legal principles drawn from many different spheres.

Thus interpreted, environment may, but frequently does not, corre-

spond with professional, scientific, or popular understandings of the

term. By way of example, those prosecuting the hypothetical offence of

doing damage to the environment must establish that the damage was

inflicted on environment as that term applies in the specific context of

the offence. If the damage was done to some man-made structure, and

such structures are excluded from the courts’ understanding of envi-