This article is adapted with permission from Chivian, E. 1993. Species Extinction and Biodiversity Loss: The Implications for Human Health. In “Critical Condition: Human Health and the Environment”, edited by E Chivian, M McCally, H Hu and A Haines. Cambridge, Mass. and London, England: MIT Press. With thanks to EO Wilson, Richard Schultes, Stephen Morse, Andrew Spielman, Paul Epstein, David Potter, Nan Vance, Rodney Fujita, Michael Balick, Suzan Strobel and Edson Albuquerque.

Human activity is causing the extinction of animal, plant and microbial species at rates that are a thousand times greater than those which would have occurred naturally (Wilson l992), approximating the largest extinctions in geological history. When homo sapiens evolved, some l00 thousand years ago, the number of species that existed was the largest ever to inhabit the Earth (Wilson l989). Current rates of species loss are reducing these levels to the lowest since the end of the Age of Dinosaurs, 65 million years ago, with estimates that one-fourth of all species will become extinct in the next 50 years (Ehrlich and Wilson l99l).

In addition to the ethical issues involved - that we have no right to kill off countless other organisms, many of which came into being tens of millions of years prior to our arrival -  this behaviour is ultimately self-destructive, upsetting the delicate ecological balance on which all life depends, including our own, and destroying the biological diversity that makes soils fertile, creates the air we breathe and provides food and other life-sustaining natural products, most of which remain to be discovered.

The exponential growth in human population coupled with an even greater rise in the consumption of resources and in the production of wastes, are the main factors endangering the survival of other species. Global warming, acid rain, the depletion of stratospheric ozone and the discharge of toxic chemicals into the air, soil and fresh- and salt-water ecosystems - all these ultimately lead to a loss of biodiversity. But it is habitat destruction by human activities, particularly deforestation, that is the greatest destroyer.

This is especially the case for tropical rainforests. Less than 50% of the area originally covered by prehistoric tropical rainforests remains, but they are still being cut and burned at a rate of approximately l42,000 square kilometres each year, equal in area to the countries of Switzerland and the Netherlands combined; this is a loss of forest cover each second the size of a football field (Wilson l992). It is this destruction which is primarily responsible for the mass extinction of the world’s species.

It has been estimated that there are somewhere between l0 million and l00 million different species on Earth. Even if a conservative estimate of 20 million total world species is used, then l0 million species would be found in tropical rainforests, and at current rates of tropical deforestation, this would mean 27,000 species would be lost in tropical rainforests alone each year, or more than seventy-four per day, three each hour (Wilson l992).

This article examines the human health implications resulting from this widespread loss of biological diversity. It is the author’s belief that if people fully comprehended the effect these massive species extinctions will have - in foreclosing the possibility of understanding and treating many incurable diseases, and ultimately, perhaps, in threatening human survival - then they would recognize that the current rates of biodiversity loss represent nothing less than a slowly evolving medical emergency and would demand that efforts to preserve species and ecosystems be given the highest priority.

The Loss of Medical Models

Three groups of endangered animals, far apart in the animal kingdom - dart-poison frogs, bears and sharks - offer striking examples of how important models for biomedical science are in danger of being squandered by humans.

Dart-poison frogs

The entire family of dart-poison frogs, the Dendrobatidae, found in the American tropics, is threatened by destruction of its habitats - the lowland tropical rainforests of Central and South America (Brody l990). These brightly coloured frogs, which include more than l00 species, are particularly sensitive to deforestation, as they often live only in very specific areas of the forest and cannot live naturally anywhere else. Scientists have come to understand that the toxins they produce, used for centuries to poison arrows and blowgun darts by Central and South American Indians, are among the deadliest natural substances known. They are also enormously useful to medicine. The active ingredients of the toxins are alkaloids, nitrogen-containing ring compounds almost exclusively found in plants (morphine, caffeine, nicotine and cocaine are examples). The alkaloids bind selectively to specific ion channels and pumps in nerve and muscle membranes. Without them, knowledge of these basic units of membrane function, found throughout the animal kingdom, would be very incomplete.

In addition to their value in basic neurophysiological research, dart-poison frogs also offer valuable biochemical clues for the production of new and potent analgesics that have a mechanism of action different from that of morphine, of new medicines for cardiac arrhythmias and of new treatments for the alleviation of some neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, myasthenia gravis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Brody l990). If rainforest destruction continues at its present rate in Central and South America, these extremely valuable frogs will be lost.

Bears

The growing black market trade in Asia for bear parts, with bear gallbladders being sold for their reputed medicinal value (worth l8 times their weight in gold), and paws for gourmet food (Montgomery l992), coupled with continued hunting and the destruction of habitats, has imperilled bear populations in many parts of the world. If some species of bears become extinct, we will all be the poorer, not only because they are beautiful, fascinating creatures that fill important ecological niches, but also because some species possess several unique physiological processes that may provide important clues for treating various human disorders. “Hibernating” (or, more accurately, “denning”) black bears, for example, are immobile for up to five months in the winter, yet do not lose bone mass (Rosenthal 1993). (True hibernators, like the marmot, woodchuck and ground squirrel, show a marked lowering of body temperature during hibernation and are not easily aroused. Black bears, by contrast, “hibernate” at near normal body temperatures and can be fully responsive to defend themselves instantly.) In contrast to humans, who would lose almost one-fourth of their bone mass during a similar period of immobility (or lack of weight bearing), bears continue to lay down new bone, making use of circulating calcium in their blood (Floyd, Nelson and Wynne 1990). Understanding the mechanisms of how they accomplish this feat may lead to effective ways of preventing and treating osteoporosis in the elderly (an enormous problem leading to fractures, pain and disability), in those confined to bedrest for long periods and in astronauts subject to prolonged states of weightlessness.

In addition, “hibernating” bears do not urinate for months. Humans who cannot excrete their waste products in urine for several days build up high levels of urea in their blood and die from its toxicity. Somehow bears recycle their urea to make new proteins, including those in muscle (Nelson 1973). If we could determine the mechanism of this process, it might lead to successful, long-term treatments for those with kidney failure, who must now rely on regular detoxification by kidney dialysis machines, or on transplantation.

Sharks

Like bears, many species of sharks are being decimated because of the demand for shark meat, especially in Asia, where shark fins for soup command prices as high as $l00 a pound (Stevens l992). Because sharks produce few offspring, grow slowly and take years to mature, they are highly vulnerable to overfishing.

Sharks have been around for almost 400 million years and have evolved highly specialized organs and physiological functions that have protected them against virtually all threats, except slaughter by humans. The wiping out of populations and extinction of some of the 350 species may become a major disaster for human beings.

The immune systems of sharks (and of their relatives, skates and rays) seem to have evolved so that the animals are almost invulnerable to developing cancers and infections. While tumours are often seen in other fish and molluscs (Tucker l985), they are rare in sharks. Preliminary investigations have supported this finding. It has proved impossible, for example, to produce tumour growth in Nurse Sharks with repeated injections of known potent carcinogenic substances (Stevens l992). And researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have isolated a substance, present in large amounts, from Basking Shark cartilage (Lee and Langer l983) that strongly inhibits the growth of new blood vessels towards solid tumours, and thereby prevents tumour growth.

Sharks may also provide valuable models for developing new types of medications to treat infections, especially important at the present time when infectious agents are developing increasing resistance to currently available antibiotics.

Other models

Countless other examples could be mentioned of unique plants, animals and micro-organisms holding the secrets of billions of evolutionary experiments that are increasingly threatened by human activity and in danger of being lost forever to medical science.

The Loss of New Medicines

Plant, animal and microbial species are themselves the sources for some of today’s most important medicines and make up a significant proportion of the total pharmacopoeia. Farnsworth (1990), for example, has found that 25% of all prescriptions dispensed from community pharmacies in the United States from l959 to l980 contained active ingredients extracted from higher plants. A much higher percentage is found in the developing world. As many as 80% of all people living in developing countries, or roughly two thirds of the world’s population, rely almost exclusively on traditional medicines using natural substances, mostly derived from plants.

The knowledge held by traditional healers, often passed down orally over centuries, has led to the discovery of many medicines that are widely used today - quinine, physostigmine,
d-tubocurarine, pilocarpine and ephedrine, to name a few (Farnsworth et al. l985). But that knowledge is fast disappearing, particularly in the Amazon, as native healers die out and are replaced by more modern medical practitioners. Botanists and pharmacologists are racing to learn these ancient practices, which, like the forest plants they employ, are also endangered (Farnsworth l990; Schultes l99l; Balick l990).

Scientists have analysed the chemistry of less than 1% of known rainforest plants for biologically active substances (Gottlieb and Mors l980) - as well as a similar proportion of temperate plants (Schultes l992) and even smaller percentages of known animals, fungi and microbes. But there may be tens of millions of species as yet undiscovered in the forests, in soils, and in lakes and oceans. With the massive extinctions currently in progress, we may be destroying new cures for incurable cancers, for AIDS, for arteriosclerotic heart disease and for other illnesses that cause enormous human suffering.

Disturbing Ecosystem Equilibria

Finally, the loss of species and the destruction of habitats may upset delicate equilibria among ecosystems on which all life depends, including our own.

Food supplies

Food supplies, for one, may be seriously threatened. Deforestation, for example, can result in significantly reduced rainfall in adjacent agricultural areas and even in regions at some distance (Wilson l988; Shulka, Nobre and Sellers l990), compromising crop productivity. The loss of topsoil from erosion, another consequence of deforestation, can have an irreversible negative impact on crops in forested regions, particularly in areas of hilly terrain, such as in regions of Nepal, Madagascar and the Philippines.

Bats and birds, among the major predators of insects that infest or eat crops, are being lost in record numbers (Brody l99l; Terborgh 1980), with untold consequences for agriculture.

Infectious diseases

Recently in Brazil, malaria has reached epidemic proportions as a consequence of massive settlement and environmental disruption of the Amazon basin. Largely under control in Brazil during the l960s, malaria has exploded 20 years later, with 560,000 cases reported in l988, 500,000 in Amazonia alone (Kingman l989). In large part, this epidemic was a consequence of the influx of huge numbers of people who had little or no immunity to malaria, who lived in make-shift shelters and wore little protective clothing. But it was also an outgrowth of their disturbing the environment of the rainforest, creating in their wake stagnant pools of water everywhere - from road construction, from silt runoff secondary to land clearing, and from open mining - pools where Anopheles darlingi, the most important malaria vector in the area, could multiply unchecked (Kingman l989).

The story of “emerging” viral illnesses may hold valuable clues for understanding the effects of habitat destruction on human beings. Argentine haemorrhagic fever, for example, a painful viral disease having a mortality of between 3 and l5% (Sanford 1991) has occurred in epidemic proportions since l958 as a result of the widespread clearing of the pampas of central Argentina and the planting of corn (Kingman l989).

The emerging viral illness which has had the greatest impact on human health, and which may be a harbinger of future viral outbreaks, is AIDS, caused by the human immunodeficiency virus - types l (HIV-l) and 2 (HIV-2). There is general agreement that the current AIDS epidemic originated from non-human primates in Africa, which have acted as natural, asymptomatic hosts and reservoirs for a family of immunodeficiency viruses (Allan l992). Good genetic evidence exists for the links of HIV-l to a simian immunodeficiency virus in African chimpanzees (Huet and Cheynier l990) and of HIV-2 to another simian virus in African sooty mangabeys (Hirsch and Olmsted l989; Gao and Yue l992). Are these cross-species viral transmissions from primates to humans the result of human encroachment into degraded forest environments?

If this is the case, we may be witnessing with AIDS the beginning of a series of viral epidemics originating from tropical rainforests where there may be thousands of viruses that could infect humans, some of which may be as lethal as AIDS (approaching l00%) but spread more easily, for instance by airborne droplets. These potential viral diseases could become the most serious public health consequence from environmental disruption of the rainforests.

Other effects

But it may be the disruption of other interrelationships among organisms, ecosystems and the global environment, about which almost nothing is known, that may prove the most catastrophic of all for human beings. What will happen to global climate and to the concentration of atmospheric gases, for example, when some critical threshold of deforestation has been reached? Forests play crucial roles in the maintenance of global precipitation patterns and in the stability of atmospheric gases.

What will be the effects on marine life if increased ultraviolet radiation causes massive ocean phytoplankton kills, particularly in the rich seas beneath the Antarctic ozone “hole”? These organisms, which are at the base of the entire marine food chain and which produce a significant portion of the world’s oxygen and consume a significant portion of its carbon dioxide, are highly vulnerable to ultraviolet damage (Schneider l99l; Roberts l989; Bridigare l989).

What will be the consequences for plant growth if acid rain and toxic chemicals poison soil fungi and bacteria essential for soil fertility? There has already been a 40-50% loss in species of fungi in Western Europe during the past 60 years, including many symbiotic mycorhizal fungi (Wilson l992), crucial to the absorption of nutrients by plants. No one understands what the effects of this loss will be.

Scientists do not know the answers to these and other critically important questions. But there are worrisome biological signals which suggest that major damage to global ecosystems has already occurred. The rapid simultaneous drop in populations of many species of frogs worldwide, even in pristine environments far from people, indicates that they may be dying as a consequence of some global environmental change (Blakeslee l990). Recent studies (Blaustein 1994) suggest that increased ultraviolet-B radiation from thinning of the ozone layer may be the cause in some of these cases.

Closer to humans, marine mammals such as striped dolphins in the Mediterranean, European harbour seals off the coast of Scandinavia and of northern Ireland, and Beluga whales in the Saint Lawrence River are also dying in record numbers. In the case of the dolphins and the seals, some of the deaths seem to be due to infections by morbilli viruses (the family of viruses including measles and canine distemper virus) causing pneumonias and encephalitides (Domingo and Ferrer l990; Kennedy and Smyth l988), perhaps also the consequence of compromised immune systems. In the case of the whales, chemical pollutants such as DDT, the insecticide Mirex, PCBs, lead and mercury seem to be involved, suppressing the Belugas’ fertility and causing their deaths ultimately by a variety of tumours and pneumonias (Dold l992). The Beluga carcasses were often so filled with these pollutants that they could be classified as hazardous waste.

Are these “indicator species”, like canaries that die in coal mines containing poisonous gases, warning us that we are upsetting fragile ecosystem balances that support all life, including our own? The 50% drop in sperm counts in healthy men worldwide during the period l938-l990 (Carlsen et al. l992), the marked increases in the rate of congenital malformations of the external genitalia in males in England and Wales from l964 to l983 (Matlai and Beral l985), the dramatic rise in some cancer incidence rates for white children from l973 to l988 (Angier l99l) and for white adults from l973 to l987 (Davis, Dinse and Hoel l994) in the United States, and the steady growth in the mortality rates for several cancers worldwide for the last three to four decades (Kurihara, Aoki and Tominaga l984; Davis and Hoel l990a, 1990b; Hoel l992) all suggest that environmental degradation may be starting to compromise not only the survival of frogs, marine mammals and other animal, plant and microbial species, but that of the human species as well.

Summary

Human activity is causing the extinction of animal, plant and microbial organisms at rates that may well eliminate one-fourth of all species on Earth within the next 50 years. There are incalculable human health consequences from this destruction:

• the loss of medical models to understand human physiology and disease

• the loss of new medicines that may successfully treat incurable cancers, AIDS, arteriosclerosis and other diseases that cause great human suffering.

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This is the first edition of the Encyclopaedia of Occupational Health and Safety to explicitly integrate relevant environmental issues within its scope. This chapter highlights a number of basic environmental policy issues which are increasingly linked to occupational safety and health. Other specialized environmental chapters include Environmental Health Hazards and Environmental Pollution Control. In addition, a special effort has been made to include sections concerning environment within each of the chapters on key industrial sectors. When first considering whether such a strategy to integrate environmental issues was indeed warranted in the Encyclopaedia, we began with the very limited perspective of including only a single chapter which would serve as a useful “cross-reference” demonstrating how occupational safety and health issues and the working environment have become increasingly linked to environmental issues. As the ILO has been stating for the past twenty-plus years: the working environment and the general environment represent “two sides of the same coin”.

It is also blatantly clear, however, that the magnitude and scope of the challenges this “two-sided coin” represents for the workers of this world are grossly underestimated and under-targeted for action. The meritable successes which receive legitimate attention and praise in this Encyclopaedia risk leading us towards a dangerous and false sense of security and confidence as regards the present state of the art in occupational safety and health and the environment. The very best of our technologies, management practices and tools have indeed made impressive strides towards remediating and preventing problems in a number of key sectors, particularly in industrialized countries. But it is also true that the global reach of these technologies, management practices and tools is indeed insufficient and limited, especially in developing countries and in transition economies.

This chapter describes a few of the most useful tools and practices available to deal with occupational health and safety and environmental problems and challenges, although it would be misleading to suggest that these are already in fact widely applied throughout the world. It is important, however, that occupational health and safety practitioners all over the world learn more about these tools and practices as a step towards their greater application and practical adaptation to different economic and social conditions.

The first article in this chapter provides a brief review of inter-relationships between occupational safety and health and the working environment, policies and issues related to the general environment and the concept of “sustainable development”. This concept became the guiding principle for Agenda 21, the action plan for the 21st century adopted at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. The past comfortable—and yet seriously misleading—view that it was not only possible but essential to differentiate problems and responses between those that deal with action at the workplace and those that deal with what occurs outside the gates of the enterprise has become blurred. In fact, today both workers and employers and their organizations have begun to recognize explicitly that the enterprise gate is far from impermeable to the effects of policies and problems encountered on both sides of that gate.

Given the growing recognition that occupational safety and health issues may have been treated in too isolated a manner in the past, this chapter provides a series of brief descriptions of a number of environmental policy issues which occupational safety and health practitioners may find particularly relevant to their own activities and concerns. The chapter contains two articles on environmental law and regulations which describe the present state of the art as regards the rapid expansion of international and national legal responses to existing and potential future environmental problems and concerns.

The chapter contains four articles describing some of the most important environmental policy tools being used today to improve environmental performance not only in industry, but also in all other sectors of our economy and throughout our societies. The articles focus upon environmental impact assessments, life-cycle analysis, risk assessment and communication and environmental auditing. The final section of this chapter provides two perspectives on pollution prevention and control: one focusing on making pollution prevention a corporate priority and the other providing a trade union perspective of pollution prevention and cleaner production technologies.

The overall objective of this chapter is to enable the reader to better perceive and understand the growing inter-relationships between occupational safety and health and the working environment, and the broader environmental issues beyond the workplace. A greater recognition of these linkages will hopefully also lead to more extensive and effective exchanges of experience and information between occupational health and safety and environmental specialists, with a view to enhancing our capacity to respond to challenges in the working environment and beyond.

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It should come as no surprise to occupational health and safety practitioners that if one traces back from most of our present major environmental problems—one arrives at a workplace! Likewise, the serious occupational health and safety consequences of some chemicals and substances have become an early warning system of potential environmental health consequences far beyond the workplace.

Despite the obvious inter-relationship between the working environment and the environment, many governments, employers and workers continue to respond to the causes and consequences of both working environment and environment issues in very disparate and isolated ways. (Given the importance of distinguishing between the working environment and those broader environmental perspectives represented by such adjectives as physical, general or external, this article will use the term working environment to encompass all occupational health, safety and environment issues within the workplace and the term environment to encompass those environmental issues beyond the workplace.) The goal of this article is to draw attention to the significant advantages which may arise from responding to the environment—within and outside the workplace—in a more integrated and strategic fashion. This is true not only for industrialized countries, which have made significant progress regarding both occupational safety and health and environment, but as well in transition economies and developing countries, which have a much broader and overwhelming challenge yet before them.

As this article has been specifically prepared for the Fourth Edition of the Encyclopaedia of Occupational Health and Safety it does not attempt to review the full range of occupational health and safety (OHS) issues related to the environment, many of which are reflected in other chapters of the Encyclopaedia. In fact, occupational health and safety is an integral part of every enterprise’s “environmental” performance. This is not to suggest that OHS and environmental protection are always totally compatible and mutually reinforcing; occasionally they may also be antagonistic. Nevertheless, the objective should be to find ways to protect both workers’ health and safety and the broader environment, and to avoid options which suggest that one needs to choose one or the other. The identification of environmental problems and response strategies has too often led to the creation of false dichotomies—environmental protection versus worker safety or environmental protection versus job security. While such conflicts may indeed exist in very specific and special circumstances, the majority of situations require a series of trade-offs and careful longer-term approaches for meeting both environmental and worker protection and employment objectives. This leads to a corollary thesis that worker-employer collaboration is a critical factor necessary for improved performance regarding both OHS and environment.

This perspective on environment and the world of work is especially evident if one assumes that OHS performance at the workplace should be driven by a focus on prevention rather than simply on control and remediation. The concept of prevention is fundamental to future improvements in OHS and the environment. Early in the 20th century in industrialized countries, OHS was often driven by a simplistic focus on control—the protection of workers from exposure to health and safety risks. Special emphasis was given to engineering solutions to limit accidents by improving machinery—for example, by introducing protective devices. As our knowledge of the health consequences related to the exposure of workers to certain chemicals and substances expanded, the “logical” response strategy was often first to protect the worker from exposure by improving ventilation systems or the wearing of protective devices. While important early exceptions exist, particularly in industrialized countries, it is a relatively recent phenomenon of the past few decades that so much public attention is being increasingly devoted in a number of key industrial sectors to eliminating or replacing the dangerous or toxic chemicals/substances with those which are significantly less harmful. It is interesting to note that this growing emphasis on prevention of the emission itself, or the use of specific chemicals, has grown at the same time as the public has become increasingly aware of and actively involved in environmental challenges.

This new environmental awareness has stressed both the immediate and longer-term consequences of environmental degradation for our societies and our economies. Such public interest in the environment appears to have also supported workers’ ongoing efforts to collaborate with employers to improve occupational safety and health. Nevertheless, it is blatantly clear that serious action to date regarding OHS and environment represents only a tip of the proverbial iceberg of OHS and environmental problems evident on our planet, and even more dramatically evident in developing countries and transition economies.

Environmental priorities and policies in industrialized countries have travelled a very similar path from control to prevention strategies, albeit in a much shorter time span than that of OHS. Concern for the environment in its early stages was in fact limited to a concern about “pollution”. Attention was focused primarily on emissions to air, water and soils generated by the production process. Therefore, response strategies similarly often focused on “end-of-pipe” strategies to deal with the problem of local emissions. Citing just one rather simple example, this narrow approach led to solutions such as taller chimneys, which unfortunately did not eliminate the pollution but rather dispersed it far beyond the enterprise gate and the local community. While this often satisfied the local community and the workers who lived and worked there, new environmental problems were created—long-distance and even transboundary air pollution, which in some cases leads to what has been called “acid rain”. Once the secondary effects of this end-of-pipe solution became evident, there followed considerable delay before some of the relevant stakeholders accepted that there were indeed other serious negative consequences created by the tall-chimney solution. The next innovative step in this process was to add on a sophisticated filtering system to trap the problem emissions before they left the chimney. As this example demonstrates, the focus of policy-makers was not on the prevention of the emissions but rather on various actions to control those emissions. Today, increasing efforts are being made to prevent the emissions by changing fuels and improving combustion technologies, as well as changing the production process itself through the introduction of so-called cleaner production technologies.

This preventive approach—which also requires a more holistic approach—has at least four significant advantages for the world of work and the environment:

• Unlike end-of-pipe technologies, which create additional costs for the production process without usually providing improvements in productivity or economic return, cleaner production technologies often lead to improvements in productivity and in measurable economic returns. In other words, end-of-pipe technologies clean up the environment but usually do not help the balance sheet. Cleaner production technologies prevent environmental degradation while also creating viable economic benefits.
• Cleaner production technologies often lead to significant improvements in the efficient use of natural resources and energy (i.e., use less natural resources to achieve comparable outputs) and also often lead to decreases in the amount of—and the toxicity of—the wastes generated.
• Efforts to introduce cleaner production technologies can and should explicitly identify measures to also improve OHS performance within the enterprise.
• Worker involvement concerning the protection of health, safety and environment as part of the cleaner technology process will lead to improvements in worker morale, understanding and job performance—all of which are well-documented factors in achieving good quality production.

Environmental policies, legislation and regulation have evolved and are leading—or at least are trying to keep up with—this process of transition from control-based approaches to prevention-centred strategies.

Both end-of-pipe and cleaner production strategies, however, have direct consequences for employment protection and creation. It is clear that in many parts of the world, particularly in industrialized countries and transition economies, there are major opportunities for job creation related to clean-up and remediation activities. At the same time, cleaner production technologies also represent a vibrant new industry which will lead to the creation of new job opportunities and, of course, will require new efforts to meet skill and training requirements. This is particularly evident in the dire need to ensure that those workers involved in meeting the challenge of environmental remediation receive effective OHS and environmental training. While much attention is being given to the potential negative impact on employment of increased regulations and controls, in the field of environment, regulation and controls, if properly developed, can lead to the creation of new jobs and promote improved environmental and OHS performance.

Another critical change in perspective towards the environment has occurred since the 1960s: a shift from an exclusive focus on production processes to give attention also to the environmental consequences of the products themselves. The most obvious example is the automobile, where considerable efforts have been made to improve its environmental “efficiency”, although much animated debate remains over whether a more efficient car should be complemented by an efficient public transport system. But clearly, all products have some environmental implications—if not in their production or use, most certainly in their eventual disposal. This shift in emphasis has led to an increasing number of environmental laws and regulations concerning the use and disposal of products, even the restriction or elimination of certain products. It also has led to new analytical techniques such as environmental impact assessments, life-cycle analysis, risk assessment and environmental auditing (see the articles later in this chapter). These new, broader perspectives on environment have implications as well for the world of work—for example, upon conditions of work for those involved in the safe disposal of products and on future employment prospects for those involved in the manufacture, sale and servicing of prohibited and restricted products.

Another driving force for environmental policy has been the rather dramatic number and scope of major industrial accidents, particularly since the Bhopal disaster in 1984. Bhopal and other major accidents like Chernobyl and the Exxon Valdez, demonstrated to the world—the public, politicians, employers and workers—that the traditional view that what happened within the gates of the workplace could not or would not affect the external environment, the general public or the health and livelihood of surrounding communities, is false. While major accidents had occurred before, the global, visual coverage of these events shocked wide segments of the public in developed and developing countries and transitional economies into a new awareness and support for environmental protection which would also protect workers and the public. It should be noted, however, that this provides another similarity to the history of action to improve occupational health and safety laws and regulations, which was also significantly promoted, for example, following early major factory fires and mining disasters.

One of the most obvious examples of the effects of these environmental driving forces, and particularly recent major “environmental” accidents, may be seen within the ILO itself, as reflected in recent decisions by its tripartite constituents. For example, the ILO has significantly enhanced its activities related to environment and the world of work. Most importantly, since 1990 three major sets of ILO working environment Conventions and Recommendations have been adopted:

• Convention No. 170 and Recommendation No. 177 concerning Safety in the Use of Chemicals at Work (1990)
• Convention No. 174 and Recommendation No. 181 concerning the Prevention of Major Industrial Accidents (1992)
• Convention No. 176 and Recommendation No. 183 concerning Safety and Health in Mines (1995).

These standards reflect an explicit extension of the traditional ILO scope from that of an exclusive focus on worker protection to also include a more holistic approach to these matters by references in the preambular or operative paragraphs to relevant aspects of the protection of the public and the environment. For example, Article 3 of Convention No. 174 states that the term major accident means “a sudden occurrence leading to a serious danger to workers, the public or environment, whether immediate or delayed”, and Article 4 states: “each Member shall formulate, implement and periodically review a coherent national policy concerning the protection of workers, the public and the environment against risk of major accidents.” The ILO’s wide range of Conventions and Recommendations related to the working environment provides a very useful source of guidance for countries working to improve their OHS and environmental performance. In this regard, it may also be useful to note that the ILO provides advisory assistance and support to its tripartite constituents with a view to helping them to ratify and implement relevant ILO standards.

In addition to these driving forces, however, there is a wide range of other factors which significantly influence the relationship between the working environment and the general environment. Clearly one of the most obvious is that despite many common concerns and issues (e.g., chemicals, accidents, health) the OHS and environmental aspects are often governed by different government ministries, different legislation, regulations and standards, and different enforcement and inspection mechanisms. These differences lead to considerable confusion, possibly additional costs as a result of duplication and, most disconcerting, to the existence of possible gaps which may lead to serious omissions concerning the protection of workers, the public and the environment. For example, recent reviews of a number of national inspectorates have drawn attention to potential problems of duplication, gaps and inconsistencies in the responsibilities assigned to factory, labour and environmental inspectorates. These reviews have also cited examples of situations in which labour inspectorates have been assigned new environmental inspection responsibilities without receiving adequate new staff and financial resources or specialized training. This has tended to deflect existing staff away from fully meeting their OHS inspection responsibilities. In addition, in many countries these legislative and inspectorate responsibilities still remain extremely limited and are not receiving adequate political and financial support. More emphasis will need to be given to developing a more integrated approach to the monitoring, enforcement and dispute settlement mechanisms related to OHS and environment regulations and standards.

While inspectorates will be essential components in any OHS and environmental protection system, by themselves they can never be sufficient. Workplace health and safety and the link between environment and the world of work will need to remain largely the responsibility of those at the enterprise level. The best way to ensure optimal performance is to ensure optimum confidence and collaboration between the workforce and management. This will need to be supported by effective training of workers and management as well as efficient joint mechanisms to support collaboration. These efforts at the enterprise level will be all the more successful if they are supported by good relations with, and access to, an adequately financed, well-trained and independent inspectorate.

The present wave of support for deregulation and structural adjustment, particularly within the public sector, if properly designed and implemented could lead to the more effective and efficient management of occupational safety and health and environmental protection. However, there are very troubling signs that suggest that this process may also lead to a deterioration of both OHS and environmental performance if governments, employers, workers and the public do not give adequate priority to these issues. All too often, OHS and environment are seen as issues which can be dealt with “later”, once more immediate economic requirements have been met. Experience suggests, however, that today’s short-term savings may lead to expensive remediation activities in the future to rectify the problems which could have been prevented at lower costs today. OHS and environment should not simply be seen as end-of-pipe and unproductive costs but rather as critical and productive social, environmental and economic investments.

Collaborative action between employers and workers at the workplace to deal with OHS issues has a long history and has clearly demonstrated its value. It is interesting to note that initially OHS issues were considered the exclusive prerogative of employers. Nevertheless, today, following very extensive efforts by the social partners, OHS issues are now seen as a matter of bipartite and/or tripartite collaboration in most countries throughout the world. In fact, many countries have established legislation requiring the creation of joint occupational health and safety committees at the workplace.

Here again, however, similar paths of development between OHS and environment are evident. When workers and their trade unions first raised issues of occupational health and safety as issues of direct concern to them, they were often dismissed as not having the knowledge and technical competence to understand or to deal with these issues. It has taken decades of dedicated effort for workers and their unions to demonstrate their fundamental role in understanding and effectively responding to these issues at the enterprise level. Workers had to insist that it was their health and safety and that they had a right to be involved in the process leading to decisions, and a positive contribution to make. Similarly, many employers and their organizations have come to recognize the benefits which have come from this collaborative process. Today, workers and their trade unions are often confronted with similar dismissive attitudes by some employers as regards their capacity and right to contribute to environmental protection. It should also be noted, however, that it is again the far-sighted and responsible employers in a limited number of high-profile sectors who are in the forefront of recognizing the talent, experience and practical common sense approach which workers can provide to improving environmental performance, and who support a well-trained, well-motivated, fully informed and fully involved workforce.

Nevertheless, some employers still argue that environment is an exclusive management responsibility and have opposed the establishment of joint safety, health and environment committees or separate joint environmental committees. Others have recognized the very critical and practical contribution that collaborative employer/worker action can make to ensuring that enterprises set and meet appropriate environmental performance standards. Such standards are no longer restricted to simply meeting mandatory legal requirements, but also include voluntary action to respond to the needs of local communities, global competitiveness, green marketing and so on. Voluntary environmental performance policies and programmes within individual enterprises or through sectoral associations (e.g., the chemical industries Responsible Care programme) often explicitly integrate both OHS and environmental considerations. Similarly, specialized and often voluntary standards prepared by organizations such as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) also have had an increasing influence on both OHS and environmental protection.

The positive experience with collaboration between employers’ and workers’ organizations has also led to new collaborative partnerships and alliances which go beyond the workplace to ensure that all the stakeholders concerned with safety, health and environment are able to constructively participate in the process. Within the ILO we have called this new effort to expand collaborative links beyond the workplace to local community groups, environmental NGOs and other institutions involved in helping to make improvements in the world of work, “tripartite-plus” collaboration.

Several emerging issues are on the horizon which may lead to special challenges and opportunities for more effective linkages between OHS and environment. Two sectors which have been particularly difficult to reach as regards both OHS and environmental performance are small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the urban informal sector. This is especially relevant as regards the awesome implications of one of the most critical environmental and developmental challenges of the 21st century: clean water and sanitation. New participatory approaches will need to be developed in order to better communicate the significant risks for workers and the environment related to many existing activities. Beyond the risks, however, there are also new opportunities to make improvements in productivity and to increase incomes from traditional activities, as well as the prospect of the creation of new income-generating activities directly related to the environment. Given the many direct and indirect linkages between the formal sector and SMEs and the urban informal sector, innovative approaches need to be designed which will facilitate the sharing of experiences on ways to improve OHS and environmental performance. Employers’ and workers’ organizations could play a very positive and practical role in this process.

Another emerging issue area is that of indoor air pollution. In the past we have tended to see large industrial establishments as the primary target to correct unhealthy working conditions. Today, however, there is growing recognition that many offices and commercial premises may also be encountering new occupational health problems due to indoor air pollution. This pollution is related to the increased use of chemicals and electronic equipment, intake of contaminated ambient air, the use of closed air recirculation and air conditioning systems, and the possible increased sensitivity of workers as a result of changing health patterns—for example, the growing number of cases of allergies and asthma. It may be expected that action to respond to indoor air pollution concerns will require a more integrated approach to both OHS and environmental factors than has been the case in the past.

Links to Sustainable Development

This article has so far briefly and superficially highlighted some of the past and potential future inter-relationships between OHS and the environment. This, however, already should be seen as a rather narrow perspective compared to the more holistic and integrated approach represented by the concept of sustainable development. This concept was the key—if not the “magic formula”—underlying the preparatory process to negotiate and endorse Agenda 21, the action plan for the 21st century adopted at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992 (see Robinson 1993). The concept of sustainable development is and will continue to be the subject of great discussion, debate and dispute. Much of this debate has been focused on semantics. For the purpose of this article, sustainable development represents both a goal and a process. As a goal, sustainable development implies development which equitably meets the needs of today’s and future generations. As a process, it means setting policies in such a way that they take into account not only economic factors but environmental and social factors as well.

If such a holistic concept is to be successfully operationalized, then the approach to all these factors will require new analysis and responses. It is essential that OHS issues become a fundamental factor in evaluating future investment and development decisions at all levels from the workplace to the negotiation of international standards. The protection of workers will need to be assessed not simply as one of the costs of doing business, but as a critical factor necessary to the achievement of economic, environmental and social objectives which are an integral part of sustainable development. This means that the protection of workers should be seen and calculated as an investment with a potentially positive rate of return within projects aimed at the achievement of environmental, social and economic objectives. The protection of workers as well cannot simply be seen as protecting them at their workplace, but should take into account the inter-relationship between their work, general health, living conditions (water, sanitation, housing), transport, culture and so on. It also implies that action to improve OHS is a prerequisite for meeting the basic economic and social development perspectives in developing countries, and not simply a luxury to be reserved for the rich countries.

As the Director-General of the ILO, Michel Hansenne, stated in his Report to the International Labour Conference in 1990:

There is in fact one central issue which pervades almost every environmental policy discussion—how to share equitably the costs and benefits of environmental action. “Who will pay for environmental improvements?” is a question which will need to be discussed and resolved at all levels, from the perspective of consumers, workers, employers, as well as from that of local, national, regional and international institutions.

For the ILO, the social and human implications of how these potential environmental costs and benefits are shared within society and between countries may be as important as the environmental actions themselves. An inequitable sharing of the social, economic and environmental costs and benefits of development, within and between countries, cannot lead to global sustainable development. Rather, it could accentuate poverty, injustice and division (ILO 1990).

In the past, and too frequently still today, workers have been called upon to pay an inequitable part of the costs of economic development through deplorable safety and health conditions (e.g., the tragic fire at the Kader Industrial Toy Company in Thailand, which took the lives of 188 workers), inadequate wages (insufficient income to meet basic family needs of food, shelter, education), lack of freedom of association and even the loss of human dignity (e.g., the use of bonded child labour). Similarly, workers and their local communities also have assumed much of the direct costs of day-to-day environmental degradation or decisions to close plants for environmental reasons. It also should be remembered that while most attention in industrialized countries has been focused on ways to avoid the potential loss of jobs as a result of environmental legislation and regulations, millions of people have already lost or have had their traditional livelihoods severely reduced as a result of ongoing desertification, deforestation, flooding and soil erosion.

Sustainable development implies that these environmental and social costs which have been “externalized” by industry and society in the past must now be internalized and reflected in the market costs of products and services. This internalization process is being encouraged by market forces and consumer groups, new laws and regulations including so-called economic instruments, as well as by decisions taken by the enterprises themselves. Nevertheless, to be successful this process of integrating the actual social and environmental costs of production and consumption will require new approaches to collaboration, communication and participation in decision-making processes. Workers’ and employers’ organizations have a critical stake in this process. They should also have a say in its design, implementation and monitoring.

In this context it may be useful to draw attention to the major diplomatic effort under way as part of the follow-up process of the UNCED Conference to facilitate an examination of the current imbalances in the global patterns of production and consumption. Chapter 4 of
Agenda 21, entitled “Changing Consumption Patterns”, indicates that action is needed to meet the following objectives:

(a) to promote patterns of consumption and production that reduce environmental stress and will meet the basic needs of humanity

(b) to develop a better understanding of the role of consumption and how to bring about more sustainable consumption patterns.

It also clearly encompasses the concept of the need for greatly expanding the basic consumption of millions of people in many parts of our world currently confronted with dire poverty and hardship. Ongoing negotiations and discussions within the framework of the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) may be expected to be very slow and complex. Nevertheless they could lead to significant changes in present production and consumption patterns, particularly in some of the most critical industrial sectors of our economies, including chemicals, energy and transport. They also will have significant repercussions on international trade and commerce. Such changes will no doubt also have important implications for OHS and environment practices in developed and developing countries and for many other areas of the world of work, especially employment, incomes and training.

Although these issues currently are being discussed primarily at the global level, it is obvious that it is at each workplace where they will need to be implemented. Therefore, it is essential that this global negotiation process reflect reality, that is, the constraints and opportunities at the workplace level all across our planet. With the globalization of our economies, and the rapid changes in the organization and structures of our workplaces (e.g., sub-contracting, part-time work, homeworkers, teleworking), and indeed changes in our perception of work, livelihoods and employment itself in the 21st century, this will be no easy task. If this process is to be successful, however, it will require the support of a tripartite collaborative process between governments and employers’ and workers’ organizations at all stages. Clearly such a bottom-up approach will play a vital role in guiding the national and global CSD process to achieve more sustainable production and consumption patterns in the future.

Conclusion

Articles in this chapter focus on action at the national and international levels as well as on practical policy tools to improve environmental performance. It is clear, however, that the most important environmental policies of the future will not be set at the national or international level or even by local communities—although each of these has an essential role to play. The real changes must and will come at the enterprise and workplace level. From the chief executive officer of large multinational corporations to the managers of small family businesses to rural farmers and independent workers in the informal sector will come the true impetus and commitment to follow through to achieve sustainable development. Change will be possible only through the growing awareness and joint action by employers and workers within enterprises and other relevant sectors (e.g., local communities, non-governmental organizations, etc.) to integrate OHS and environmental objectives within the overall objectives and priorities of the enterprise. Despite the magnitude of the challenge, one can foresee the range of formal and informal safety, health and environmental policies at the enterprise level developed, implemented and monitored by a collaborative process between management and workers and other stakeholders.

Occupational health and safety clearly has a significant impact on the achievement of our overall economic, environmental and social objectives. Therefore, OHS must be seen as a critical element to be included within the complex integration process to achieve sustainable development. Following the UNCED Conference, all national governments have been called upon to develop their own national Agenda 21 strategies and plans for sustainable development. Environmental objectives already are seen as an integral part of that process. Much work remains, however, before OHS and employment and social objectives and targets will become an explicit and intrinsic part of that process and the economic and political support necessary for the achievement of those objectives is mobilized.

The preparation of this article has been greatly facilitated by the technical support, useful advice and comments and regular encouragement from colleagues, governments, employers and workers from around the world who are keenly committed and competent in this field, but particularly key representatives from the International Federation of Chemical, Energy and General Workers’ Unions (ICEF); Canadian Labour Congress; the Communications, Energy and Paper Workers’ Unions of Canada; and the Labourers’ International Union of North America, who have stressed the urgent need for action in this field.

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The relationship between human health and the human environment has been recognized from time immemorial. This tenet of medicine can be traced back to Hippocrates, who taught his pupils to “attend to the airs, waters, and places” if they sought to understand the sources of health and diseases in their patients (Lloyd 1983).

This ancient view of the link between human health and the environment has persisted. The degree of a society’s acceptance of this link has been influenced by three factors: development of a scientific understanding of the human body; increased capacity to cure individual illnesses; and the evolution of parallel scientific, religious and cultural concepts.

Environmental factors as a cause of health or diseases of entire classes of people were given increased attention during the Industrial Revolution. The trend has continued to this day, assisted by the development of the environmental sciences and of techniques for determining causality and assessing risks.

It was in the workplace that causal links between health and the environment were first clearly established. It was also in the workplace that the consequences of the increase in the amount and variety of contaminants resulting from the diversification of industrial processes were first felt. Yet these contaminants cannot be confined to the occupational environment. Once released, their pathway may become difficult to follow or trace, but it inevitably ends in nature: environmental toxins are present in the soil, water and air of even the most remote environments. Human health, in turn, is affected by the pollution of the natural environment, whether of local, national or transboundary origin. Along with other types of environmental degradation, which cause worldwide depletion of natural resources, this accords a planetary dimension to the interaction between environmental conditions and public health.

The conclusion is inescapable that the quality of the work environment and of the natural environment are inextricably linked. Lasting solutions to either of these problems can be successful only if both are tackled in tandem.

Environmental Law: A Means to an End

The formulation of policies to maintain and improve both the natural and the work environment is a prerequisite to successful environmental management. Policies, however, remain a dead letter unless they are implemented. Such implementation is only achievable through the translation of policy principles into rules of law. From this perspective, law is at the service of policy, giving it concreteness and a degree of permanency through appropriate legislation.

Legislation, in turn, is a framework structure which is useful only if implemented and enforced. Implementation and enforcement are dependent on the political and social contexts in which they take place; if they are not backed by the public, they are likely to remain inefficient.

Therefore, enactment, implementation and enforcement of environmental legislation are, to a large extent, dependent on understanding and acceptance of the rules established by those to whom these rules are addressed—hence the importance of disseminating environmental information and knowledge to the public at large, as well as to specific target groups.

The Role of Environmental Law: Prevention and Cure

The role of law in the environmental field, as in many other fields, is twofold: first, to create rules and conditions which are conducive to the control or prevention of damage to the environment or human health; and, second, to offer remedies for situations where damage has occurred in spite of these rules and conditions.

Prevention through command techniques

Land use controls

The regulation of land use is a major element of environmental law, and a prerequisite to the control and guidance of land development and the utilization of natural resources. The issue is usually whether a particular environment may be put to another use, it being understood that non-use is also a type of land use.

Land use controls allow siting human activities where they are best located (or least damaging), and also subject contemplated activities to restrictions. These two goals are usually achieved by establishing a requirement for prior authorization.

Prior authorization

Prior authorization is a generic term for any form of permission (e.g., licence, permit) which must be obtained from a regulatory authority before certain activities may be undertaken.

The first step is to determine by law those private and public sector activities which are subject to prior authorization. Several approaches are possible and are not mutually exclusive:

Controls of sources. When a category of sources of environmental harm is clearly identifiable, it is usually subject to prior authorization as such (e.g., all classes of industrial facilities and motor vehicles).

Controls of substances. When a particular substance or class of substances is identified as potentially harmful to the environment, the use or release of these substances may be made subject to prior authorization.

Media-oriented controls, and integrated pollution control. Media-oriented controls are those which are directed at protecting a specific component of the environment (air, water, soil). Such controls may lead to shifting environmental harm from one medium to another, and thus fail to reduce (or may even increase) the overall degree of environmental harm. This has led to the development of coordinated prior authorization systems, whereby all pollution from one source and all recipient media are considered before one single, all-embracing authorization is granted.

Environmental standards

Environmental standards are maximum permissible limits which may be imposed directly by a law, or indirectly as conditions to obtain an authorization. These limits may be related either to the effects or the causes of environmental harm:

• Effect-related standards are those which take the target as a baseline. They include: 
• (1) biological standards, (2) exposure standards and (3) environmental quality standards.
• Cause-related standards are those which take the cause of the possible environmental harm as a baseline. They include: (1) emission standards, (2) product standards and (3) process or operating standards.

A variety of factors, including the nature of the pollutant, the recipient media and the state of the art, determine which type of standard is most appropriate. Other considerations also play an important role: standard-setting provides a means to achieve a balance between what is environmentally desirable in a particular place at a particular point in time, and the socioeconomic feasibility of achieving a specific environmental goal.

It goes without saying that the stricter the standards are, the higher production costs become. Therefore, differing standards in different locations within a state or between states play an important role in determining competitive market advantages or disadvantages, and may constitute non-tariff barriers to trade—hence the desirability of seeking harmonization at the regional or global level.

Prevention through incentives and disincentives

Controls voluntarily submitted to may be used as flanking measures or as alternatives to command techniques. They usually consist of setting recommended (rather than compulsory) values, and of providing economic incentives or disincentives to achieve them.

The purpose of an incentive (e.g., accelerated depreciation allowance, tax benefit, subsidy) is to reward and, therefore, to generate, a specific environmentally friendly conduct or activity. Thus, instead of trying to achieve a certain emission level by the stick, the carrot of economic benefit is offered.

The purpose of a disincentive (e.g., fees, such as effluent or emission charge, tax or levy) is to induce environmentally friendly conduct so as to avoid paying the fee in question.

There are also other ways of inducing adherence to recommended values, for instance, through the creation of eco-label award schemes, or providing marketing advantages where consumers are sensitized to environmental concerns.

These so-called voluntary approaches are often referred to as alternatives to “legal” controls, forgetting that incentives and disincentives also have to be established by law!

Cure through sanctions or remedies

Sanctions imposed by the regulatory agency

In cases where environmental management measures may be prescribed by the regulatory agency (e.g., through a prior authorization mechanism), legal regimes usually also provide the agency with enforcement powers. A variety of techniques are available, ranging from the imposition of monetary sanctions (e.g., per day) until compliance with the requirement, to execution of the measures required (e.g., building filters) at the cost of the addressee, and finally to closure of the facility for non-compliance with administrative requirements, etc.

Each legal system provides for ways in which these measures may be challenged by those to whom they are applied. Equally important is to provide the possibility for other interested parties (e.g., NGOs representing the public interest) to challenge the decisions of the regulatory agency. In the latter case, it is not only the action of the administration which should be eligible for challenge, but also its inaction.

Penal sanctions

Legislation prescribing a certain environmental norm or conduct usually indicates that disregarding the established rules, whether intentionally or not, constitutes an offence, and determines the type of penal sanctions which are to be applied to each case. Penal sanctions may be monetary (fines) or, in serious cases, may entail incarceration, or a combination of both. Penal sanctions for environmental offences depend upon the penal system of each country. Thus, sanctions are often imposed in reference to the main body of criminal law in a particular country (e.g., a penal code), which may also include a chapter on environmental offences. Penal sanctions can be triggered by the administration or by an aggrieved party.

The legislation of many countries has been criticized for failing to declare certain environmental misconducts as penal offences, or for providing overly mild penalties for environmental offences. It has often been observed that if the quantum of the sanctions is less than the cost of internalizing environmental management measures, the culprits are likely to deliberately prefer the risk of a penal sanction, especially if this sanction may be only a fine. This is especially true when there is an enforcement deficit—that is, when the enforcement of environmental norms is lax or lenient, as is often the case.

Liability for damages

Each legal system’s rules applying to liability for damage naturally also apply to health and environmental damage. This usually means that compensation is due either in kind or specie only when the damage proves to have been caused directly by the fault of one or more originators.

In the environmental field, the difficulties in applying these principles are numerous, and have led to the enactment of sui generis environmental liability laws in an increasing number of countries. This has made it possible to provide for liability without fault, and, therefore, to allow for compensation independently of the circumstances which caused the damage. In such cases, however, a certain monetary ceiling is usually set with a view to permitting eligibility for insurance coverage, which may also be made compulsory by law.

These special regimes also attempt to better provide redress in cases of damage to the environment per se (ecological damage as opposed to economic damage), usually requiring the restoration of the environment to the status quo ante whenever the nature of the damage permits. In such a scenario, monetary damages are in order only if restoration is impossible.

Access to remedies

Not everyone may take action to generate sanctions or obtain remedies. These may traditionally be triggered only by the administration, or a physical or legal person directly affected by a certain situation. In cases where it is the environment that is affected, this is usually insufficient, since much environmental damage is not directly linked to individual human interests. Therefore, it is important for legal systems to grant “representatives” of the public interest the right to sue the administration for failure to act or for insufficient action, or to sue individuals or enterprises for breaking the law or causing damage to the environment. There are various ways in which this can be achieved: designated non-governmental organizations may be given this right; the legal system may provide for class action or citizens’ suits, etc. The right to sue in defence of the public interest, rather than only to defend a proprietary interest, is one of the most important elements of modern environmental legislation.

Conclusion

Good environmental legislation is a prerequisite to achieve and maintain the desired levels of quality in the natural, as well as in the work environment.

What “good” environmental legislation is, might be difficult to define. Some wish to see a decline in command and control methods, and their replacement by softer incitation techniques but, in practice, there is no standard formula to decide what the ingredients of the law should be. What is important, however, is to make legislation relevant to the particular situation of the country concerned, adapting available principles, methods and techniques to the needs, capacities and legal traditions of each country.

This is all the more true at a time when large numbers of developing nations and nations with economies in transition seek to equip themselves with “good” environmental legislation, or to retrofit legislation already in place. In striving towards this goal, however, legislation which is successful in a particular legal, economic and social context, frequently that of an industrialized country, is still too often imported as a model in countries and legal systems for which it is totally inappropriate.

“Particularizing” legislation is, therefore, perhaps the most important element in achieving the goal of effective environmental legislation.

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