Abstract
In this article, “things” lawyers call “principles” of environmental law will be discussed from a theoretical perspective. Three fundamental questions are answered: 1. Where does the high moral value that is usually attributed principles come from? 2. What is the exact difference between a principle and a legal rule, and between a principle and a policy? 3. What is the relationship between a principle and more concrete legal rules and policies? 
 
 It is argued that principles of environmental law receive their high moral value from the ideal of sustainable development. An ideal is a value that is explicit, implicit or latent in the law, or the public and moral culture of a society or group that usually cannot be fully realised, and that partly transcends contingent, historical formulations, and implementations in terms of rules and principles. Principles form a necessary link between directly applicable and enforceable environmental legal rules and the underlying ideal. They are a necessary medium for ideals to find their way into concrete rules and can be used to bridge the gap between the morality of duty and the morality of aspiration. 
 
 Because of their basis in (written or unwritten) law and their possible direct and intense influence on legal rules concerning activities that may harm the environment, they must be placed within the morality of duty: a bridgehead within the morality of duty reaching out for the morality of aspiration. From the general function of principles of forming a beachhead in the morality of duty, nine more concrete functions can be derived. These functions principles, both of a substantive and of a procedural nature, have, make it possible to distinguish them from legal rules. 
Highlights
Since the 1992 Rio Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), environmental legal principles, such as the precautionary principle, the polluter-pays principle or the principle of public participation, play an ever-increasing role in international and national environmental law and policy, as does the concept of sustainable development
What is the relationship between the ideal of sustainable development and the legal principles and more concrete environmental legal rules, and between the principles and the rules? There is a lot of misunderstanding and confusion on this subject, as has been stated rather clearly by Howard Mann:[4]
Principles are a necessary medium for ideals to find their way into concrete rules. They can be used to bridge the gap between the morality of duty and the morality of aspiration. Because of their basis in law and their possible direct and intense influence on legal rules concerning activities that may harm the environment, they must be placed within the morality of duty: a bridgehead within the morality of duty reaching out for the morality of aspiration.[50]
Summary
Since the 1992 Rio Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), environmental legal principles, such as the precautionary principle, the polluter-pays principle or the principle of public participation, play an ever-increasing role in international and national environmental law and policy, as does the concept of sustainable development. If the principles were commitments, they should be included in the convention as legal rules Such a vision on principles underestimates their role in legal practice and, more in general, fails to appreciate the legal meaning of principles and the basic difference between principles and legal rules.[7] In its extensive work on “Legal Principles for Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development”, the Experts Group on Environmental Law of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) has not addressed the question of the legal status of these principles at all.[8]. Recommended in this respect is De Sadeleer Environmental Principles, who goes into these three principels in great detail
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