Pollution polluter pays principle

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has been a proponent of the "polluter pays" principle. What is the principle and how can it be implemented ... 

Created the Environment Agency (EAJ and the SEA for Scotland. Contains detailed provisions for dealing with a range of environmental issues including air quality contaminated land reinforcing the polluter pays principle water quality, with the EA empowered to require action to prevent water pollution and to require polluters to clean up after any pollution episode. 

Polluter pays principle (PPP) The term that relates to either the industry or the individual being responsible for the cost of all pollution-control measures. 

External costs have to be considered and included in prices in order to give the product their real cost. One way to include external costs is to follow the Polluters Pay Principle (PPP). The PPP state that the polluter should bear the cost of policy... 

For all future activities, and in order to achieve sustainable management of water resources, including related soil and sediment compartments, the strategy to be followed should involve (i) the precautionary principle, (ii) polluter pays principle and (iii) application of the best available techniques (BATs) and best environmental practices, including where appropriate, clean technologies. 

This index could be considered as a tool to calculate a fine for each effluent in application of a "polluter pays" principle. Such a fine certainly bears relevance to effluent chronic toxicity and would encourage the reduction of toxicant discharge to aquatic environments. Furthermore, such a fine could be considered fair and realistic since it is based on a statistical approach that minimizes the loss of information. 

Finally, requiring firms to pay for the right to pollute is consistent with the polluter pays principle, which starts from the premise that the right to a clean environment is owned by the public from this basis, if firms wish to pollute the environment, they must purchase the right to do so from the public, rather than being given it for free. 

A straightforward tenet of the EC Treaty is that it is the polluter who should pay for pollution or harm caused by its activities or products. It establishes that responsibility for the causation of environmental pollution can be measured in monetary terms, but limitations in evaluating the effects of pollution (especially in terms of monetary value) severely hamper application of this principle. If applied fully, the polluter pays principle would mean that prices of all products would reflect the full cost of production and consumption, including the environmental cost [220]. In this way, final consumer use of products would be the considered to be polluting activities. 

Recommendation on the Application of the Polluter-Pays Principle to Accidental Pollution (C(89)88/Final). 

Polluter Pays Principle. OECD Council says that those causing pollution should pay the costs. 

Three basic principles have emerged as common themes in these policies the Polluter Pays Principle clarifies who bears the costs for chemical contamination the Substitution Principle encourages the adoption of the safest chemicals and the Precautionary Principle promotes preventive action even in the face of the uncertainties of risks (see Section 3.3.2 for a more in depth discussion of the Precautionary Principle). Specifically, the new national chemicals policies of Northern European countries have relied on rapid screening tests for determining regulatory actions on chemicals, focused on products and product lifecycles for risk reduction, established lists of undesirable substances, and, in limited cases, employed government authority to phase out the use of the most hazardous substances such as lead, mercury, cadmium, brominated flame retardants and chlorinated paraffins (for a more extensive review, see Tickner and Geiser, 2003, www.chemicalspolicy.org). 

The courts of India have formally adopted a polluter pays principle, which requires that where possible, environmental contamination costs will be charged to the entities causing pollution. The Indian Supreme court has adopted this as a binding principle of law ... 

In the case of Vellore Citizens Forum, the Indian Supreme court clarified further that the Polluter Pays Principle as interpreted by this Court means that the absolute... 

By the Polluter Pays principle it may be expected that Union Carbide may ultimately be found to be at least one of the responsible parties. 

A core policy requirement for the development of the Part IIA regime was that it should reflect the polluter pays principle . This is internationally accepted as the basic paradigm for environmental liabilities and responsibilities. However, implementing the polluter pays principle for historic contamination is not a simple task. There may, for example, have been a considerable chain of custody for different contaminants over the time they have been in the ground. 

Stages, industry and all persons shall be liable to pay for the environmentally harmful consequences of their actions and development programmes... The principle of the polluter s liability, or the polluter pays principle as it is commonly known, shall be strictly applicable. (Recommendation 1130(1990)). 

However, the inUoduction of the Polluter Pays principle in civil liability law raises complex questions as for example, how to quantify the values of disappearing vegetal species as a consequence of the pollution of a river, how to quantify restoration costs, who should have a legal right claiming compensation or restoration. 

At the EC level there also exists — though being shelved in 1991 — an amended proposal for a Council Directive on civil liability for damage caused by waste [5]. This proposal applies only to damage that is caused by waste. Due to difficulties in defining waste, the scope of the proposed directive is far from clear. The prc sal also channels Uability, contrary to international conventions to be described below, onto the waste producer regardless of whether or not the producer is in control of waste at the time of the incident. This solution is not deemed to match the polluter pays principle according which it should be for the operator actually in control of the activity to shoulder the possible liability. 

Whereas the objectives and principles of the Community s environment policy, as set out in the European Community action programmes on the environment on the basis of the principles enshrined in Article 130r (1) and (2) of the EEC Treaty, aim in particular at preventing, reducing and as far as possible eliminating pollution and ensuring sound management of raw materials resources, on the basis also of the polluter pays principle ... 

Member States may, in accordance with the principles governing Community environmental policy, inter alia, the polluter-pays principle, adopt economic instruments to promote the achievement of the objectives of this Directive. Member States shall ensure that these instruments do not distort internal market and competition rules. 

This is the basis of the polluter pays principle , which was incorporated into the Maastricht Treaty and states that those who are responsible for environmental pollution, resource depletion, and social cost should pay the fuU cost of their activities. 

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