A Prolonged Recessional: The Continuing Influence of British Rule on Israeli Environmental Law

Abstract:     
This draft chapter for a collection of essays on Israeli environmental history argues that the shape and structure of Israeli environmental law, particularly its relative lack of uniform “command and control” emissions or technology standards, is directly traceable to the country’s past as a territory of the British Empire. Even much supposedly modern Israeli legislation is actually based on models inherited from the Palestine Mandate, including a reliance on nuisance law, Continental-style ad-hoc licensing of pollution, and ambitious centralized planning of land and water use. Moreover, even contemporary developments in Israeli environmental law, such as the turn to economic instruments, can be understood as deriving from the country’s colonial past.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 31

Keywords: environmental law, history of environmental law, Israel, Palestine, command and control, nuisance, British, British Empire, licensing, centralized planning, overrides, colonial, postcolonial, economic tools, environmental enforcement

working papers series