Study Background
ECTs have been established in over 60 countries, states, and local jurisdictions – representing an amazingly diverse array of laws, powers, legal jurisdictions, decisionmakers, processes, and political independence (or not). ECTs exist in many wealthy developed countries with strong environmental and land use laws and enforcement (like the USA, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada). They have also been established in a surprising number of the more impoverished developing countries with variable laws and enforcement (such as Kenya, South Africa, Sudan, Malawi, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, South Korea, Brazil, Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana, and Costa Rica).
And the trend is expanding. Currently a number of countries and jurisdictions are considering creating new ECTs (including Britain, Tanzania, Abu Dhabi, Thailand, Indonesia, and Hong Kong).
Arguments in favor of ECTs include the complexity of environmental and land use laws, the expertise required to deal with the scientific-technical issues, the level of factual uncertainty involved, the value-laden nature of the underlying policies, the substantial body of international environmental treaties and law, poor performance and decisional inconsistency of general courts, docket pressures on the existing legal system, etc. Arguments against ECTs include the existence of other fields with legal and factual complexity (health and employment being examples), resistance to fragmenting the judicial system, preference for reform by incremental measures within the existing system, doubts about a viable workload, added costs, etc.