AN INTRODUCTION TO ENVIRONMENTAL LAW

Common sense clearly tells us that our environment is deteriorating at an increasing and worrying rate. Air pollution, declining water quality – vital elements! –, global warming, erosion of biodiversity, extinction of vegetable and animal species, destruction of forests and ecosystems, genetically modified organisms…. To these we can add major chemical catastrophes: oil slicks (the Torrey Canyon in 1967, the Amoco Cadiz in 1978, the Exxon Valdez in 1989, the Erika in 1999, the Prestige in 2002 and the list goes on); large-scale industrial accidents (the dioxin leak at Seveso in 1976, the explosion of a pesticide factory in Bhopal in 1984, the fire in a chemical storage warehouse in Basel in 1986, the explosion of the AZF chemical factory in Toulouse in 2001 and of the Jilin petrochemical factory in China in 2005); and nuclear accidents (Three Mile Island in the USA in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986) or the destruction of the ozone layer. Most indicators are flashing red, the urgency of the matter has been proven and the stakes are crucial.