Choosing a "best" Canadian environmental management strategy

All human societies have laws, which may be written or unwritten. Those laws, and the mechanisms to enforce them, evolve as internal and external forces shape the society. Modern environmental regulatory frameworks are a complex mixture of traditional behavioural rules and newer benchmarks of environmental performance. Gradually, we have come to value the rules themselves above the goals they are intended to achieve. In fact, environmental improvement can be achieved in many ways, not just through traditional regulatory approaches. Traditional "command-and-control" regulation provides a useful backstop but is limited in its ability to encourage innovation. Newer approaches, including economic instruments, voluntary clean-up, and recognition programs, offer the means to encourage prevention, protection, and conservation, rather than resource wastage and reliance on end-of-pipe technology. A combination of command-and-control programs for minimum limits, coupled with economic incentives and voluntary compliance schemes for enhanced protection, may be the only viable environmental management strategy for the 21st century.Key words: environmental management, environmental law, pollution prevention, economic instruments, voluntary, compliance.