Instruments of the State's Ecological Policy as Regards the Protection of the Air

Abstract

Ecological policy and its instruments essentially affect economy and other spheres of social. In practice, the management of environmental resources has two models of regulation. The latter makes it possible to reach the ends of ecological policy: the direct method based on administrative steps taken to define the levels of reducing pollution released to the environment; the indirect method means to create behaviours and preferences concerning thestate in which it is possible to reach a socially-acceptable level of production and consumption, thereby accomplishing a socially-acceptable level of pollution. (The paper discusses only part of the issues that establish the instruments of ecological policy of the state as regards the protection of the air. The problems of instruments called instruments of direct regulation will be published in the following „Annal of Natural Sciences”, fsc. 1).

Both methods use their respective instruments, by means of which the state monitors entrepreneurs and other organizational units in order to enforce them to take such actions that are desirable from the point of view of the policy to protect the environment.

Additionally, one can distinguish a group of instruments in the system of the instruments of direct regulation that I call instruments of the execution of law. Their specific character consists in their manner of influence on entrepreneurs, for their task is not so much to impose duties as regard protection of the environment, but to safeguard the performance of duties that have already been imposed by virtue of administrative decisions or common rules. These instruments play the role of supporting means to accomplish the ends of ecological policy. What I mean here is the following: fines for the encroachment on the demands of the protection of the environment, closing down the company or the exploitation of machines and devices that are hazardous for the environment.