Environmental law is a collective term encompassing aspects of the law that provide protection to the environment. A related but distinct set of regulatory regimes, now strongly influenced by environmental legal principles, focus on the management of specific natural resources, such as forests, minerals, or fisheries. Other areas, such as environmental impact assessment, may not fit neatly into either category, but are nonetheless important components of environmental law.
The organized environmental movement is represented by a wide range of non-governmental organizations or NGOs that seek to address environmental issues in the United States. They operate on local, national, and international scales. Environmental NGOs vary widely in political views and in the ways they seek to influence the environmental policy of the United States and other governments.
The environmental movement, also including conservation and green politics, is a diverse philosophical, social, and political movement for addressing environmental issues. Environmentalists advocate the just and sustainable management of resources and stewardship of the environment through changes in public policy and individual behaviour. In its recognition of humanity as a participant in ecosystems, the movement is centered on ecology, health, and human rights.
The National Wild and Scenic Rivers System was created by the Wild and Scenic Rivers Actof 1968, enacted by the U.S. Congress to preserve certain rivers with outstanding natural, cultural, and recreational values in a free-flowing condition for the enjoyment of present and future generations.
Paul Ralph Ehrlich is an American biologist known for his warnings about the consequences of population growth and limited resources. He is the Bing Professor Emeritus of Population Studies of the Department of Biology of Stanford University and President of Stanford's Center for Conservation Biology.
Environmental protection is the practice of protecting the natural environment by individuals, organizations and governments. Its objectives are to conserve natural resources and the existing natural environment and, where possible, to repair damage and reverse trends.
Wilderness or wildlands are natural environments on Earth that have not been significantly modified by human activity or any nonurbanized land not under extensive agricultural cultivation. The term has traditionally referred to terrestrial environments, though growing attention is being placed on marine wilderness. Recent maps of wilderness suggest it covers roughly one quarter of Earth's terrestrial surface, but is being rapidly degraded by human activity. Even less wilderness remains in the ocean, with only 13.2% free from intense human activity.
Anne Howland Ehrlich is an American senior research scientist emeritus in conservation biology in the Department of Biology at Stanford University and co-author of more than thirty books on overpopulation and ecology with her colleague and husband, Stanford professor Paul R. Ehrlich, including The population Bomb (1968), The Stork and the Plow (1995), with Gretchen Daily, and The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment (2008). She also has written extensively on issues of public concern such as population control, environmental protection, and environmental consequences of nuclear war.
Environmental education (EE) refers to organized efforts to teach how natural environments function, and particularly, how human beings can manage behavior and ecosystems to live sustainably. It is a multi-disciplinary field integrating disciplines such as biology, chemistry, physics, ecology, earth science, atmospheric science, mathematics, and geography.
Human overpopulation is the concept of a human population becoming too large to be sustained by its environment or resources in the long term. The idea is usually discussed in the context of world population, though it may also concern individual nations, regions, and cities.
The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment was held in Stockholm, Sweden, from June 5–16 in 1972.
A wild river or heritage river (Canada) is a river or a river system designated by a government to be protected and kept "relatively untouched by development and are therefore in near natural condition, with all, or almost all, of their natural values intact."
The Stockholm Declaration of 1972, or the Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, is the first United Nations declaration on the global environment. It consists of 26 principles and led to the creation of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which laid the foundation for future global environmental governance. The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment was held in Stockholm, Sweden, from June 5–16 in 1972. The 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment signifies the first international effort to place environmental issues at the forefront of global concerns. The Conference sought to recognize the finite nature of Earth's resources and human impacts on the environment. It represented the beginning of a global dialogue on the link between economic growth, the pollution of the environment, and the well-being of humanity. The resulting Stockholm Declaration urged its partnering nations to reduce air, land, and water degradation by integrating science and technology in their development plans. It also called nations to create regulations on wildlife protection, environmental conservation, and population control. While the reception of the ideas in the Declaration generally stayed positive, it received wide criticisms on its practical implementation, especially from developing nations.
Environmental adult education is recognized as a "hybrid outgrowth of the environmental movement and adult education, combining an ecological orientation with a learning paradigm to provide a vigorous educational approach to environmental concerns."
This timeline of the history of environmentalism is a listing of events that have shaped humanity's perspective on the environment. This timeline includes human induced disasters, environmentalists that have had a positive influence, and environmental legislation.
This is a list of notable events relating to the environment in 2007. They relate to environmental law, conservation, environmentalism and environmental issues.
This is a list of notable events relating to the environment in 1972. They relate to environmental law, conservation, environmentalism and environmental issues.
This is a list of notable events relating to the environment in 1990. They relate to environmental law, conservation, environmentalism and environmental issues.
Rights of nature or Earth rights is a legal and jurisprudential theory that describes inherent rights as associated with ecosystems and species, similar to the concept of fundamental human rights. The rights of nature concept challenges twentieth-century laws as generally grounded in a flawed frame of nature as "resource" to be owned, used, and degraded. Proponents argue that laws grounded in rights of nature direct humanity to act appropriately and in a way consistent with modern, system-based science, which demonstrates that humans and the natural world are fundamentally interconnected.
