지방분권개혁과 환경법의 과제

Abstract

Environmental problems are closely related to people's lives and have strong local characteristics. During the economically fast growing era, while the central government focused on the development of industries, local governments have implemented pioneering pollution prevention measures to protect people's lives and health. The Article 5 of 'Law against environmental pollution' stipulates that “The Local Government has the responsibility to establish and implement policies in accordance with the national pollution policies to prevent pollution.” This law prescribes that local governments have the authority and responsibility only second to those of the central government. Article 2 of The Local Government Act stipulates “pollution prevention” as a local government's affair. Owing to decentralization reform, much part of environment related affairs that used to be under the control of central government can be independently handled by local governments now. As a result, the environmental affairs that were not affected by the environmental ordinances enacted by a local government in the past are under the control of local government now. And the local government's authority on environment administration has been expanded. In general, the regulation standards of environment protection laws are national minimum. Therefore, to protect the local environment, the local government should be able to enact ordinances that have higher legal and regulation standards than the national standards and are applied to wider scope. The purpose of this study is to clarify the duties of local government for future environment administration by organizing and evaluating the important points of decentralization regarding environment administration.