Legal responsibility for environmental damage - Introduction to International Environmental Law - page 173

When the Soviet satellite Kosmos 954 crashed in uninhabited parts of Canada in
1978, scattering radioactivity into the environment and causing other environ-
mental damage, Canada invoked the Convention on International Liability for
Damage Caused by Space Objects, since both states were parties to it. However,
the Soviet Union contested its applicability, and in the end it was not relied upon.
Instead, after lengthy negotiations, the Soviet Union agreed to pay about half of
the 6 million dollars that Canada had initially claimed. The Soviet Union did
not acknowledge its treaty-based liability for the damage caused by the Kosmos.
Both the Stockholm 1972 Declaration (Principle 22) and the Rio 1992
Environment Declaration (Principle 13) urge states to include compensation
rules in any international environmental agreements. Nothing happened in
the 20 years between these two declarations, but in 1993, the parties to the
Basel 1989 Waste Convention revisited the principle of strict liability. The
parties produced a protocol in 1999 that resembled the nuclear liability and
oil transport systems: the Basel Protocol on Liability and Compensation. 9
The 2000 Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, related to the Biodiversity
Convention, regulates living organisms that have been modifi ed by biotechnology.
In 2004, the parties commenced negotiations for a protocol on compensation; the
Protocol was fi nally opened for signature on 7 March 2011. The Nagoya-Kuala
Lumpur Supplementary Protocol on Liability and Redress to the Cartagena
Protocol on Biosafety establishes the strict liability of any actor in control of living
organisms modifi ed by biotechnology and their transboundary transportation and
who is responsible for damage to biodiversity and its sustainable usage.
The parties to the Stockholm POPs Convention also considered a protocol
on compensation, but this has not been achieved, at least to date.
There are also regional strict-liability conventions. A common strict-liability
protocol was negotiated in 2003 to the two Helsinki Conventions under the
UN Economic Commission for Europe. It applies to both industrial accidents
and to damage to transboundary watercourses. Although signed by 24 coun-
tries, the protocol is ratifi ed by only one of them, where 16 ratifi cations are
required for the protocol to enter into force.
Similarly, Annex VI to the Madrid Protocol on Environmental Protection
to the Antarctic Treaty on Liability was adopted in 2005. The objective is to
allocate responsibilities and costs for clean-up following environmental
emergencies and to establish strict liability in environmental emergencies.
Annex VI will enter into force when all consultative parties have adopted it.
To date, only a handful of the 28 consultative parties have adopted it, so it is
not likely to enter into force any time soon.
Legal liability in practice
On the whole, it is fair to say that although international law and international
environmental law do include general rules on state responsibility based on