Environmental issues, importance of Environmental Authority
Environmental issues
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With the many environmental reforms over the past decades, Environmental Authority still remains the centre focus to see the various environmental recommendations to being implemented in many countries. Environmental issues have gained a lot of increasing importance to humanity as many environmental concerns are daily addressed and implemented. One of the responsibilities of man is to protect and preserve the natural resources, some of which have been mismanaged and misused. The purity of nature is attached to its beauty and the existence of protective measures upon it. However, faced with many challenges, it is a common knowledge that the activities of man have made nature vulnerable to exploitation, and generally misuse. This has called for various governments to form specific agencies that manage environmental concerns regionally. The targets of such agencies are to control naturally degrading activities such as pollution, depletion of natural resources, improvement of environment as well as its protection. This calls for close analysis of environmental authority and their roles in protecting, preserving, and managing the environment.
With the trend of globalization process, many countries in the world are becoming industrious since production of different products has enormously advanced. In order for the environment, for instance natural resources, to be safe and cleaner, the environmental authority is formed with the mandate to regulate environmental effects due to various activities in a particular region. the environmental authority develop and implement programs that monitor, describe and identify some of the adverse impacts to the values of the environmental water quality and flows which are undermined by authorized mining activities. They are also mandated to do the following:
Promote educational environmental programs that create public awareness of the environmental issues
Establish and develop national standards for environmental factors
Monitor and regulate the compliance with the standards and criteria relating to environment
The appropriate legal control measures to prevent environmental degradations
Develop and create effective policies for management of environmental concerns
The aspect of environment authority is associated with the above roles and functions as far as management of public health and environmental matters are concerned. These responsibilities range from monitoring and inspecting the environmental parameters to integration of pollution control. Environmental Authority is empowered by two main examples;
Intervention in the price mechanism, which involve environmental taxes and subsidies.
Control and command measures, which involves regulations and directives.
The authority use the formulated policies to ensure efficiency in the use for resources, manage renewable and non-renewable resources as well as providing deserved incentives for low missions. Certain products or services may possess polluting effects, and are therefore viewed harmful to the environment. For instance the government through the environmental authority may increase or introduce environmental tax on specific product in order to control its demand and supply. The goal of this directive may be to assist in the reduction of production levels towards some estimated social optimum level of production.
Environment has also suffered due to pollution effect of the industrial or production aftermaths. Certain externalities of negative do occur as a result of some manufacturing activities which may in the end create pollution of various types and impose clean-up costs and health costs to the society. In such a case, the producer would be forced by the Environment Authority to pay for the environmental costs of pollution. This would mean therefore that the society suffers environmental effects if the Environmental Authority fails to control or regulate these producers of certain goods and services. Industrial products driven to rivers, streams and other water flows cause water pollution and more harms to plants, animals and even to humans. Regulatory approaches to controlling population can lead to higher total costs of pollution drop. Consider the situation of two polluters with different marginal pollution costs. A marginal pollution cost curve will show the cost to the farmer after agreement to comply with the pollution standards set by the Environmental authority. Assuming a constant level of production, upon the introduction of the regulations by the authority, the production may be reduced to half, particularly if the cost of reducing pollution had cost the farmer half of the production the previous time. If each farm is required to reduce its pollution by this amount, the costs of reducing the marginal unit of pollution are much higher on one farm than the other.
This approach may be improved through the introduction of trade emissions permits. Producers are given permits by the Environmental Authority the right to pollute, at a cost which increases as the rate of pollution increase. Some countries, especially the OECD countries have adopted the polluter pay rule to control some of the negative impacts of environmental pollutions. The authority ensures that producers compensate for their negative externality that they have created to the society.
Amidst all the environmental challenges, the Environmental Authority have come very strong in facilitating and promoting environmental awareness through their continued positive approaches to saving the natural resources. Using various mechanisms to enforce their policies, environmental factors have become a global concern and various technological applications are being introduced to help improve the status of the sensitive resources. The authority has maintained adverse and large centre for environmental information that are well supported by their programs and policies.
Work Cited
Miller, Christopher. Planning and environmental protection: a review of law and policy. Oxford: Hart, 2001. Print.
Rychlak, Ronald J., and David Wayne Case. Environmental law. New York: Oceana, 2010.
“waste management principles” has the meaning given by the Environmental Protection (Waste Management) Policy 2000.