Between priceless and worthless: challenges in using market mechanisms for conserving biodiversity

This article appears in Transnational Environmental Law published by Cambridge University Press. Copyright 2012 Cambridge University Press There is growing interest in the use of market mechanisms, such as offsetting and payments for ecosystem services, to further the conservation of biodiversity. The specific needs of biodiversity mean that this approach faces significant challenges in terms of defining the units that can be the subject of the economic or market devices, of ensuring that such mechanisms do deliver conservation gains and of establishing appropriate governance arrangements. There are also ethical concerns that a market approach entails a commodification of nature which sacrifices some of the very elements which make nature valuable to us. The market-based schemes currently being operated and devised should be studied carefully to see how successfully these challenges can be met.</p

The UK and Brexit – Environmental opportunity or disaster?

The environmental implications of the UK leaving the EU have yet to be fully realized, but the picture is by no means all negative. Initially, as far as possible, all EU environmental legislation continues to apply in the interests of regulatory certainty but divergences are beginning to emerge. Brexit has led to the proposed establishment of a new independent environmental watchdog, and the Government has committed itself to ambitious environmental goals. The Common Agricultural Policy will be replaced by financial schemes that will pay farmers only for public benefits, mainly concerning the environment. At the same time, a consequence of Brexit is that that the UK will see increasing divergencies in environmental law and policy within its devolved administrations.Trudno jeszcze wyrokować jakie będą implikacje wyjścia Zjednoczonego Królestwa&nbsp; z Unii Europejskiej, ale w żadnym razie obraz w całości nie jawi się jedynie negatywnie.&nbsp; Początkowo, jak tylko to możliwe, prawodawstwo unijne w kwestiach środowiskowych w całości jest stosowane w interesie odpowiednich regulacji, chociaż zaczynają pojawiać się też rozbieżności. Brexit doprowadził do zaproponowania ustanowienia nowego niezależnego ciała stojącego na straży środowiska, a Rząd Jej Królewskiej Mości zobowiązał się do osiągnięcia ambitnych celów w tym obszarze. Wspólna Polityka Rolna zostanie zastąpiona finansowymi programami, które będą gratyfikowały rolników za ich działania dla dobra wspólnego, szczególnie w sferze spraw związanych ze środowiskiem. Równocześnie, konsekwencją Brexitu jest fakt, że Zjednoczone Królestwo zauważy w przyszłości pogłębiające się rozbieżności&nbsp; w prawie i polityce środowiskowej zdecentralizowanych administracji

Environmental law in the United Kingdom post Brexit

UK environmental law has been heavily influenced by EU membership, and Brexit presents both opportunities and challenges to its long-term development. In the immediate future the substance of much of existing EU environmental law will continue to have legal effect in the UK after Brexit under the Government’s policy of ‘roll-over’. But it has become increasingly clear that other features of the EU environmental architecture will need to be replicated after Brexit—notably the role of general environmental principles, and the European Commission’s supervisory role in ensuring that environmental law is properly applied by government