| Summary: | <p>This chapter offers a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of 'command and control' environmental standards. It suggests that academic literature has been particularly concerned with discussing 'command and control' standards in the context of broad, at times theoretically informed debates, about the relevant role of states and markets in environmental regulation. More pragmatically empirically informed literature has documented deficits in the implementation of 'command and control' standards and has proposed options for resolving these. Differently from this, this chapter suggests that limited conceptualizations of how the natural environment works, and how it is influenced by human actions, is a key shortcoming of environmental 'command and control' standards. This 'conceptualization gap' may be more significant for restricting the effectiveness of 'command and control' standards than their limited economic incentives or implementation deficits. </p> <p> The chapter then explores how applied science models that analyse environmental risks can hlep to close this 'conceptualization gap'. Discussing the role of science in the setting and implementation of 'command and control' standards matters expecially in the context of comparative environmental law'. Drawing on the abstract, conceptual, and thus potentially trans-jurisdictional 'language of science' may make these standards more comparable, and potentially more alike across different jurisdictions. Hence, the chapter probes the potential of the 'language of science' as perhaps greater than that of the indeterminate 'language of law', for promoting the harmonization of 'command and control' standards across different jurisdictions.</p>
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