Flashcards: Environmental law

An Ecotax (short for ecological taxation) is a tax levied on activities which are considered to be harmful to the environment and is intended to promote environmentally friendly activities via economic incentives.

A natural landscape is the original landscape that exists before it is acted upon by human culture.

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are organic compounds that are resistant to environmental degradation through chemical, biological, and photolytic processes.

CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, also known as the Washington Convention) is a multilateral treaty to protect endangered plants and animals.

Environmental assessment<section begin=overview /> (EA) is the term used for the assessment of the environmental consequences (positive and negative) of a plan, policy, program, or concrete projects prior to the decision to move forward with the proposed action.

The Kyoto Protocol is an international treaty which extends the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits State Parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the premise that (a) global warming exists and (b) human-made CO2 emissions have caused it.

The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, often shortened to Rio Declaration, was a short document produced at the 1992 United Nations "Conference on Environment and Development" (UNCED), informally known as the Earth Summit.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is an agency of United Nations and coordinates its environmental activities, assisting developing countries in implementing environmentally sound policies and practices.

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are organic chemicals that have a high vapor pressure at ordinary room temperature.

A carbon tax is a tax levied on the carbon content of fuels.

Air quality laws<section begin=overview /> govern the emission of air pollutants into the atmosphere.

Common heritage of mankind (also termed the common heritage of humanity, common heritage of humankind or common heritage principle) is a principle of international law which holds that defined territorial areas and elements of humanity's common heritage (cultural and natural) should be held in trust for future generations and be protected from exploitation by individual nation states or corporations.

The public trust doctrine is the principle that the sovereign holds in trust for public use some resources such as shoreline between the high and low tide lines, regardless of private property ownership.