The Nagoya-Kuala Lumpur Supplementary Protocol on Liability and Redress to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, adopted on 15 October 2010 in Nagoya, Japan, provides an international liability regime for biodiversity damage caused by living modified organisms (LMOs). Its adoption marks a significant development in the legal design for international environmental liability regimes, as it incorporates for the first time in global treaties an administrative approach to liability. This book examines the Supplementary Protocol from both practitioner and academic perspectives. In its three parts the book explores the historical development, legal significances, and future implementation of the core provisions of the Supplementary Protocol, focusing specifically on its incorporation of an administrative approach to liability for biodiversity damage and its relation to civil liability. Contributors to the volume include Co-Chairs of the negotiating group and the negotiators and advisors from some of the key negotiating Parties, offering valuable insights into the difficult-to-read provisions of the Supplementary Protocol. The book demonstrates the significant changes in the political configuration of environmental treaty negotiations which have come about in the twenty-first century, and argues that the liability approach of the Supplementary Protocol has important implications for future development of international liability regimes under international environmental law.

This book focuses on how public and private international law address civil liability for transboundary pollution. In public international law, civil liability treaties promote the implementation of minimum procedural standards in domestic tort law. This approach implicitly relies on private international law to facilitate civil litigation against transboundary polluters. Yet this connection remains poorly understood. Filling the gap, this book engages in a meaningful dialogue between the two areas and explores how domestic private international law can reflect the policies developed in international environmental law. It begins with an investigation of civil liability in international environmental law. It then identifies preferable rules of civil jurisdiction, foreign judgments and choice of law for environmental damage, using Canadian private international law as a case study and making extensive references to European law. Liability for transboundary pollution is a contentious issue of the law, both in scholarship and practice: international lawyers both private and public as well as environmental lawyers will welcome this important work.

This study considers the problems of defining and valuing "environmental damage" from the perspective of international and comparative law. The need for a broad and systematic evaluation of this issue is illustrated by the number of topics presently on the international law-making agenda to which it is relevant, including the UN Compensation Commission's decisions on compensation for environmental losses suffered by Kuwait in the Gulf War, nuclear and oil pollution liability regimes, the development of an environmental liability protocol to the Antarctic Treaty and other agreements on bio-safety and genetically modified organisms. It is thus an important element in contemporary efforts to strengthen legal remedies for environmental harm which does not necessarily come within traditional categories of legally protected personal or property rights.

Clarifies legal requirements for environmental protection in deep seabed mining and the legal consequences when environmental damage occurs.

The role of law in responding to global environmental problems and the interplay between different levels of regulation and governance is becoming increasingly relevant in the field of liability and reparation for environmental damage. This book examines the relationship and reciprocal influences between the EU and the international legal order in a multilevel and comparative perspective, in relation to the ongoing efforts to elaborate effective regimes of liability and reparation for environmental damage. It offers a comparative analysis of legal developments in the field of environmental liability within the EU and at the international law level and addresses questions concerning the impact of such interaction on the development, implementation and enforcement of appropriate responses to environmental damage within the respective legal orders and on a global level. Given the book’s focus and the transnational legal dimension of the issues covered, this volume will be of great interest to legal academics and researchers working in the environmental law field from an EU law and international law perspective, as well as more generally to scholars interested in the study of the relationship between EU and international law. Outside academia, the book will also be of great interest to practitioners wishing to get insights into the application of the law of environmental liability in the EU and at the international law level.

Wer haftet, wenn sich selbst ausbreitende Gentechnik grenzüberschreitende Schäden verursacht? Mit Gene Drives und ähnlichen Verfahren wird es bald möglich sein, das Erbgut wild lebender Arten, Keime und Nutzpflanzen direkt in der Umwelt zu verändern. Dies könnte helfen, drängende Probleme in der öffentlichen Gesundheit, im Naturschutz und in der Ernährungssicherheit zu lösen. Allerdings bergen diese Verfahren auch das Risiko einer unkontrollierten Ausbreitung über Staatsgrenzen hinweg. Anhand einer grundlegenden Untersuchung der einschlägigen Verträge und des Völkergewohnheitsrechts zu Prävention und Haftung für grenzüberschreitende Schäden wird aufgezeigt, dass das derzeit geltende Völkerrecht dieser Herausforderung noch nicht gewachsen ist.

This book analyzes international and Chinese regulatory approaches addressing environmental risks that may be caused by GM crops and examines how China implements its international obligations in its policies and laws. Using the legal doctrinal method, the book discusses the precautionary principle and the public involvement principle, as well as several legal measures at the international law level and in Chinese law. It observes that legal principles and measures as provided for in China’s GMO legal framework have generally implemented the international obligations regarding the prevention of environmental risks that may be caused by the cultivation of GM crops and related activities. However, the book argues that Chinese law lacks an explicit codification of the precautionary principle, and the same is true with regard to public participation; the regulatory framework lacks specific obligations. It concludes that future research should focus on the application and enforcement of the relevant Chinese legislation, and that it is also important to investigate how the environmental risks that may be caused by new techniques, such as genome-editing techniques, could be prevented, given the experience gained by regulating the cultivation of GM crops and related activities.