Regulation of the trade in hazardous wastes.

• Author: Bowal, Peter

"We all live downstream"

-- Greenpeace motto

Introduction

If one is old enough to remember a few decades back, one may realize the rapid growth of what may generally be called environmentalism. There was seemingly unlimited fresh water and pristine wilderness. We enjoyed parks, drove big gas-gulping cars, and learned vaguely about conservation in school. A generation ago only a few voices in the wilderness were raising an alarm about our natural environment. There was no branch of regulation called environmental law.

In the early 1970s, some governments created Ministries of the Environment for the first time. The national (Ontario-based) Canadian Environmental Law Association was formed a few years later. Health concerns associated with DDT arose. This was followed in rapid succession by international concerns at Three Mile Island, Love Canal, Bhopal (with its direct effects on human beings), North American acid rain, Brazilian rainforest going up in smoke, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, CFCs degrading the ozone layer, the Greenhouse effect, old growth forests, and little spotted owls.

Federal legislation, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, came into force in 1985. The first World Commission on the Environment and Development (the Bruntland Commission) was convened in 1987. It coined the new term sustainable development for our lexicon. This Commission boosted the environmental juggernaut that culminated in one of the largest multilateral head of state shows of force in Rio de Janiero, the Earth Summit, in 1992. Suddenly, the physical environment was a matter for international protection.

This led to the creation of Round Tables on the environment (twelve in Canada) to consider long-term environmental strategy. In the present decade, most industrialized governments passed comprehensive omnibus legislation to both protect the environment in the future and deal with past degradation. Regional and global trade treaties, such as our NAFTA, address environmental sustainability. Most recently, the Kyoto Accord set rigorous targets for reducing world greenhouse gas emissions that many believe will impair the standard of living to which they have become accustomed.

Today, many advanced study programs in environmental science, management, and law are offered. Several hundred environmental interest groups operate. This acute environmental awareness and around the world has resulted in not only the enactment, but the spirited enforcement, of environmental protection regulations. Statutes regulate the storage, transportation...