Environmental Law - History

History

Pure water has been an issue in many antique societies and therefore one can admittedly argue that the first legal rules on environmental issues are pretty old - they are clearly originating from roman law rules and were also applied in the middle ages in Europe. While it is possible to identify early legal structures that would today fall into the "environmental" law metric - for example the common law recognition of private and public rights to protect interests in land, such as nuisance, or post-industrial revolution human health protections - the concept of "environmental law" as a separate and distinct body of law is a 20th Century development. The recognition that the natural environment was fragile and in need of special legal protections, the translation of that recognition into legal structures, and the development of those structures into a larger body of "environmental law" did not occur until about the 1960s. At that time, numerous influences - including a growing awareness of the unity and fragility of the biosphere following mankind's first steps into outer space (see, for example, the Blue Marble), increased public concern over the impact of industrial activity on natural resources and human health (see, for example, the 1969 Cuyahoga River fire, the increasing strength of the regulatory state, and more broadly the advent and success of environmentalism as a political movement - coalesced to produce a huge new body of law in a relatively short period of time. While the modern history of environmental law is one of continuing controversy, by the end of the 20th Century, environmental law had been established as a component of the legal landscape in all developed nations of the world, many developing ones, and the larger project of international law..