Criminal Liability of States for Environmental Harm: The Perspective of International Law

Abstract

International law has been a driving force of change and progress in the protection of the environment, ever since it started producing results in the early 1970s through the proliferation of international environmental law in the early 1990s. Besides setting the standard of conduct for states, international law also grapples with the standard of their responsibility once they breach their international obligations. The rules of state responsibility were codified by the International Law Commission of the United Nations (ILC) in 2001 in a set of articles that, by and large, reflect customary international law, entitled ‘Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts’ (ARSIWA). It is in the context of the codification of the ARSIWA that the ILC discussed extensively the possibility of developing a specialized regime for the crimes of states. The goal of this paper is to question whether there is room for developing environmental crimes of states.