Abstract

This article studies the significance and role of the regulatory activity of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in the formation of the principles of such a comparatively new field of international law as international environmental law. It is shown that although at the time of its creation in 1960, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development was in no way an international organization of environmental character, but since the early 1970s, environmental issues have become an important area of international legal cooperation under the auspices of this organization. In 1971, an Environmental Protection Committee was formed within the OECD, now called the Environmental Policy Committee. During the 1970s, under the auspices of the OECD, the Recommendations on Guiding Principles concerning International Economic Aspects of Environmental Policies of 1972 and the Recommendation on the Implementation of the Polluter-Pays Principle of 1974 were adopted, enshrining the polluter-pays principle, which imposes on the polluter the costs of implementing pollution prevention and control measures to ensure that the environment is in good condition. The provisions of the OECD Recommendation on the Implementation of the Polluter-Pays Principle of 1974 were quickly implemented in the law of the European Communities and today the Lisbon version of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union contains it in paragraph 2 of Article 191, together with such principles of the European Union's environmental policy as the precautionary principle, the principles that preventive action should be taken, that environmental damage should as a priority be rectified at source. The «polluter pays» principle is normatively enshrined only in The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development of 1992, The Convention on the Transboundary Effects of Industrial Accidents of 1992, etc. Regulatory activity under the auspices of the OECD were also essential for the establishment and formation of such principles of international environmental law as the principle of preliminary environmental impact assessment, the principle of undiminished environmental protection of other states and areas beyond national jurisdiction, etc.

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