The Polluter Pays Principle

Authors Avatar

                University of Malta

                Aloysius Bianchi

The Polluter Pays Principle implies that persons who are responsible for pollution are made to pay the cost of the measures necessary to avoid or reduce it. Such a principle was generated from the principles of the civil code, i.e. any damages arising from the act/omission of the individual will be liable for environmental damages. Instead of leaving it wide as the civil law does, environmental law, specifies that it is the polluting party and not only who is negligent who has to bear the financial and any other liability. The regulations under the Environment Protection Act (EPA) include punishments for who degrades the environment.

In legal terms who is the polluter?

Part 1 Article 2 of the EPA defines the term pollution and since no definition of polluter is established in the Act, such offender can be described as who degrades or pollutes the environment in some way or another as established in article 2 of the EPA.

Pollution means the direct or indirect (such as slurry of pigs from a pig farm) introduction by man (only anthropocentric activities are liable to damages – because conversely one can have pollution by animals such as methane from cattle) into the environment of substances, organism, (such as the introduction of an alien specie, which can have a damage effect because it can effect natural flora), genetic material (what is in the nucleus not only chromosomes) or energy (defined in the interpretation provision of the EPA) which are likely to cause hazard to human health, harm to living resources or to ecosystem, or to damage amenities (depriving the person from enjoying the environment for instance good quality air) or to interfere with other legitimate uses (such as when you deprive the use from resources e.g. you cannot withdraw water from the water table) of the environment.

Join now!

What does the word pay imply?

Article 9 (2) (n) is the translation of the polluter pays principle in substantive terms. It enables the Minister responsible for the environment to stipulate criminal punishments for any act or omission which is tantamount to the degradation of the environment, where the offender will be liable to a criminal offence not only in monetary terms such as a penalty not greater than a fine (multa) of one hundred liri   but it can go in both ways meaning imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years. Therefore article 9 (2) (n) lays ...

This is a preview of the whole essay