Ethnology of Legislative Approaches to Environmental Protection: Challenges and Instances

Securing comprehensive compliance to regulations is one of the purposes that all governments are seeking. For this reason, all legislative, executive and judicial systems make all their efforts to achieve this objective. Therefore, each of them will fulfill a part of this task. Some part of this process refers to the basic issues of the existence or absence of a rule that means whether it is derived from social realities as well as the public needs. Also, whether it conforms to the basic values of the society. But adopting an appropriate approach or policies is considered as another prerequisite to ensure comprehensive compliance. When the necessity of a rule is compromised, the second issue which will be raised is the crystalization. Thus, it is common to violate environmental provisions which are so expensive. Some of these problems rooted in the kind of rules which are enacted. Althogh social desirability of Environmental rules as well as their supports from the society, human life and the environment made them (these rules) to be more important, which approaches can be more fruitful to achieve the objective is the major issue to be addressed in the paper. Firms attempt to violate environmental regulations in various ways in order to reduce their costs. By doing so, they can make they own benefits. This will result in social expenses; then different legislative approaches are aimed to reduce such types of costs. The main objective of this paper is to explain these approaches as well as investigate whether traditional approach of "command and control" can establish a sustainable status for comprehensive compliance or not. In summary, “incentive based” approach should be proposed as a complementary role of traditional approach for the regulatory efficiency legislation or, in other words, the enactment of more efficient laws and regulations.