Environmental laws circa 1970

The Journal of Global History recently published Lena Joos's "‘Only One Earth’: Environmental Perceptions and Policies before the Stockholm Conference, 1968–1972". The article is based on a comparative study of sixty-three preparatory country reports for the UN Conference on the Human Environment 1968–1972 (UNCHE). One of the article's sections, "Environmental policy measures around 1970 in global comparison", has a lot of information on environmental laws in these countries at the time, including a table with dozens of laws from various countries on a variety of environmental issues. Joos writes that legal measures were the most widespread reported approach to solving environmental problems:

In 1972, forty-nine countries (78%) had legal regulations on the environment in place. Three different forms of legal measures can be distinguished at the national level. Firstly, environmentally significant changes to the legal framework, for example, laws, which defined the responsible actors and empowered them with the requisite powers. Other measures of this type were laws that regulate, for example, the granting of licenses and the privatisation or nationalisation of environmentally significant goods. For example, authorities issued licenses for hunting animals (Botswana, Israel), forest areas (Brazil, DRC), and industrial sites (Denmark, Israel, Norway). Privatisation was not mentioned in any report; nationalisation of forests occurred in Nepal (1956) and Iran (1963); nationalisation of the land was introduced in Senegal (1964). Overall, however, measures concerning ownership were rarely reported, even in socialist countries. The second form, legal requirements, can further be divided into precepts and prohibitions. For instance, countries set emission standards for industries (Canada, Japan), motor vehicles (Denmark, Ireland, the USA), or required filters for the production process (Brazil, FRG, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Ukraine, Yugoslavia). Prohibitions aimed at preventing actions harmful to the environment were widespread and mentioned in 71% of the reports. The most famous example was the prohibition of the pesticide DDT, which was banned by nineteen of the sixty-three countries between 1969 and 1971. Closely linked to the requirements and prohibitions was the third form of legal measures: the sanctioning of environmentally damaging behaviour, e.g. fines for polluting activities.

Not all countries surveyed implemented legal environmental standards. And the mere existence of environmental legislation says little about the level of detail and the design of the laws. Thus, while many countries had environmental laws, in most, these were fragmentary. Around 1972, according to the reports, only Japan, Sweden, the GDR, and Switzerland had comprehensive environmental laws. In all other cases, the laws covered only one specific sector of the environment such as the protection of wildlife, air preservation, soil conservation, nature and landscape protection, water and sea protection, town planning, forest conservation, noise, radiation protection, waste management, and pesticides. In terms of the implementation date, individual environmental laws were in some cases implemented before 1950. However, most of the laws mentioned in the country reports originated in the fifteen years before the UNCHE. The large-scale establishment of environmental legislation was thus a fairly recent development around 1970 and can be connected to some extent to the preparatory process of the UNCHE.

This is an interesting and important argument, though I'd like to see more evidence before being convinced that a law enacted in 1960 should be credited to the preparatory process of the UNCHE. 

12 June 1972 - Meeting of the Second Committee of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, Stockholm, Sweden. At the presiding table during the meeting of the Second Committee (left to right): Mr.Luis Perez Arteta, Programme Director of the Second Committee; Joseph Odero-Jowi (Kenya), Chairman of the Second Committee, and M. Plehn-Mejia, Committee Secretary. (Photo Credit: UN Photo/Yutaka Nagat)

Joos goes on:

International agreements were an important supplement to legal measures at the national level. These agreements mainly regulated the use of transboundary waters, e.g. the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution of the Sea by Oil, created in 1954. In 1972, twenty-nine countries studied here had ratified the convention. Beyond existing conventions, sixteen countries called for further, improved agreements. For example, the London Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter was initiated by the UNCHE.

Also relevant were institutional and administrative measures, with environmental authorities and institutions established in thirty-nine countries (62%). 

Between 1962 and 1971, thirty-one countries established forty-six commissions, most of which were responsible for coordinating research and environmental activities, drawing up standards, and carrying out measurements and controls. While fifteen of the forty-six commissions had a holistic scope, the others were sectoral and concerned with water, air, pesticides, nature protection, spatial planning, ocean pollution, wildlife, noise, and waste. In twenty countries, new ministerial offices were created between 1951 and 1972. Of these, nine industrialised countries established their holistic environment ministries between 1970 and 1972. Another form of institutional measures comprised the creation of state-protected areas (seven countries) and national parks (fourteen countries) to protect the landscape, flora, and fauna. In conclusion, according to the reports, many states took institutional environmental protection measures around 1970, with holistic institution-building occurring mainly in industrialised countries. Besides these measures on a national scale, institution-building also took place at the international level, e.g. the Inter-Governmental Maritime Consultative Organisation. However, compared to the national institutions, the establishment of international institutions was less frequent and comprehensive in scope.