This study aims to review the how international organizations define the Polluter Pays Principle with regard to economic, environmental, and developmental cooperation. It also presents exceptions to the Polluter Pays Principle under OECD, WTO Agreements and other international instruments like European Union Acts. It further provides an overview of how the principle has been implemented at the national level as a market based environmental policy instrument.
Originating as an economic tenet, over the years, the Polluter Pays Principle has become a general concept used in OECD Member country environmental policies. After having only been a principle of environmental law at the national level, in the 1990s the principle became “a general principle of international environmental law”. Furthermore, the burden on polluters has increased in scope over time: at first, it involved only the costs of pollution prevention and control; later, it came to include compensation payments, taxes and charges, and is now evolving in certain instruments towards encompassed all pollution-related expenditure. This implies that the principle’s implementation produces substantial impacts on the environment and economy at both national and international levels.
This study also makes a theoretical review of national and international impacts of the principle as it relates to international trade. The analysis proves that the economic and social welfares of the country implementing the principle improve, even if implementation increases the polluter's burden. For this reason, interest groups enga