Okowa, Phoebe --- "Responsibility for Environmental Damage" [2010] ELECD 603; in Fitzmaurice, Malgosia; Ong, M. David; Merkouris, Panos (eds), "Research Handbook on International Environmental Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: Research Handbook on International Environmental Law

Editor(s): Fitzmaurice, Malgosia; Ong, M. David; Merkouris, Panos

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847201249

Section: Chapter 15

Section Title: Responsibility for Environmental Damage

Author(s): Okowa, Phoebe

Number of pages: 17

Extract:

15 Responsibility for environmental damage
Phoebe Okowa



A Introduction: the classical framework and its limits
Although few disputes have relied on state responsibility in the modern law of environmen-
tal protection, it remains the starting point in any enquiry as to how accountability in this field
can be achieved. The debate and legal writings that accompanied the increased public sensi-
tivity to the importance of environmental values, especially after the 1972 Stockholm
Conference,1 had in general taken as their starting point that any harm resulting from envi-
ronmental damage entailed the responsibility of states. The precedents and examples relied
on were not by any stretch concerned with the environment and their enduring value was not
always accepted at face value (Schachter, 1991: 365). However, there was always an implicit
assumption that the law was capable of evolution and would adapt to changed circumstances
and reflect the new priority assigned to environmental values. Many of these cases had
evolved and been shaped in the ideological milieu of industrialisation and laissez-faire
economics that accompanied it. They were in general not sensitive to any values other than
those that maximised production. In keeping with the prevailing priorities, they did not take
into account the long-term environmental consequences of industrial production. Secondly,
the law of state responsibility had until now been largely concerned with the interests of
imperial nations and the protection of their overseas investments (L.F.H. Neer and Pauline
Neer (USA) v. United Mexican States, 1926: 60; Laura ...