Legal responsibility for environmental damage - Introduction to International Environmental Law - page 172

Another historically signifi cant aspect of strict liability is the regulation of
civil liability for maritime oil transportation. The original oil liability
agreements - both the International Convention on Civil Liability for Oil
Pollution Damage 4 and the International Convention on the Establishment of
an International Fund for Compensation for Oil Pollution Damage 5 - were
replaced by protocols adopted in 1992 which concerned oil liability and which
established a fund for compensation. 6 The protocols entered into force in
1996. These revised liability conventions extended environmental liability to
cover not only compensation for damage but with an additional requirement
to restore the environment to its previous state. In 2001, the IMO also
produced the Convention on Civil Liability for Bunker Oil Pollution
Damage. 7
These oil transport agreements are based on the principle that strict liabil-
ity is channelled to the owner of the ship; unless he or she can prove that
the damage was not caused by the ship (that is, the burden of proof is
reversed). The owner's liability is limited in the same way as with nuclear
power plant damage. This is because unless the liability was limited, very
few states would have ratifi ed the Convention; on the other hand, this also
means that the victims are not always being fully compensated. To secure
compensation, a ship's proprietors have the obligation to insure. If the
insurance is inadequate, the Fund for Compensation for Oil Pollution
Damage kicks in: it supplements the oil liability Convention by collecting
contributions both from oil companies operating within the convention
parties and from the recipients of oil into a fund from which compensation
can be paid.
In 1978, the Amoco Cadiz was responsible for causing signifi cant oil
damage to the Brittany coast in France. The parties affected by the damage
did not turn to the French court system which would have applied the limi-
tations of liability in the oil liability convention; instead, the plaintiffs went
directly to the US court system. The USA was not a party to the convention,
so the limitations of liability were not applicable (the tanker was owned by
Amoco Corporation of USA). The legal strategy yielded greater compensa-
tion to the injured parties compared with what they could have obtained
through the French courts.
In these cases, states have prioritized the liability of individual actors and
industries for compensating environmental damage (and the secondary liabil-
ity of states in nuclear liability agreements). There is one agreement by which
states have assumed the primary liability for compensation: the Convention
on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects. 8