Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The core issue in law is who is liable when things go wrong. Trainee lawyers
are advised to always prepare for the worst. If you were working on a coop-
eration agreement between two companies, you would be sure to make note
of any contentious points that could lead to disputes or litigation right from
the outset. The same is true of international environmental law. When an
international environmental treaty is negotiated, lawyers will be present as part
of the broader team, but should the negotiations turn to compensation for
environmental damage, almost all the negotiators in the room will be lawyers.
This tends to make lawyers 'masters of precaution': we always prepare for
the worst. We require any risks to be assessed before any project is imple-
mented, lest further down the line there is a chance of liability for damages.
How might the 'master of precaution' title be applied to the prevention of
climate change? All of humanity is at risk, and solutions are expected from the
scholars and practitioners of international environmental law.
There are those who have risen to the challenge. In the 2005 Montreal
Climate Conference, the then chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, Sheila
Watt-Cloutier, announced that her organization had fi led a human rights peti-
tion with the Inter-American Human Rights Commission against the United
States. The organization considered that the irresponsible climate policy of the
USA had violated many of the human rights of the Inuit. Watt-Cloutier called
the human rights petition against the USA 'the most loving deed of her life'.
I admired her courage, notwithstanding my doubts about the likely success
of the petition. We are still living in a time when legal liability in the interna-
tional community is largely defi ned on the basis of the compensation
principles of general international law and these, as we will see, are diffi cult to
apply to the consequences of climate change. Legal liability can be applied
most easily in more tangible circumstances: for example, when a large factory
on one side of a border pollutes the environment across the border, or when
an oil disaster contaminates a coast.
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