Choice of Regulatory Instruments for Environmental Protection

Traditionally the regulator in the most of legal systems implies the command & control approach and compulsory instruments to protect environment like standardization and criminalization. These instruments besides their positive aspects like high enforcement, are faced with some problems such increasing implementation costs for firms. These negative impacts urge a shift to implication of non-compulsory instruments to reduce the costs and increase the social involvement. Iranian legal system also has emphasized on compulsory regulatory instruments in doing so which is one of the causes of legal inefficiencies in environmental protection. This article taking a descriptive and analytical method, exercises the positive and negative points of the both instruments and suggests a combined model to choose the instruments based on environmental sensitivities, state preparedness and economic factors. There is no serious legal limitation in adoption of this model in the Iranian environmental legal system.