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About the module:

The air we breathe. The food we eat. The ground we live on. Environmental protection poses unique challenges to the law. In this module on environmental law, we critically assess the role that law has to play in regulating and protecting the environment by examining a range of contemporary environmental issues including climate change, nature conservation, and pollution control. We will look at UK and international environmental law. We consider how relevant aspects of these bodies of law apply to the complexities of environmental problems that cross borders and are ever changing, and which implicate ingrained social behaviours.

We will look at a range of regulatory philosophies and mechanisms, ranging from traditional approaches such as ‘command and control’ regulation of pollution, to the establishment of trading regimes in carbon, to the ways in which environmental impacts are assessed and evaluated before the development of land or the adoption of strategic social and economic plans. We will consider how environmental philosophies such as environmental justice inform, inspire and critique environmental law.

This module is ideal for those interested in contemporary environmental issues and disputes and is a useful stepping-stone for those wishing to work in private, commercial practice as well as for those students wishing to enter the NGO/public sector.

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Recommended texts: There is no fixed text book that is used every week on this module. Instead, we use a range of material from articles and books, all of which are easily available from the library. If you would like to do some advance preparation, you can look at either or both of Environmental Law by Stuart Bell and others (OUP) and Environmental Law: Text, Cases & Materials by Elizabeth Fisher and others (OUP), both of which will be used at some points on the module.