ICL and Environmental Protection Symposium: International Criminal Law as a Tool for Corporate Responsibility for Environmental Crimes (Part I)

Jun 4, 2020 | Jelena Aparac
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While environmental agreements are signed between States, it is often non-state actors, including corporations, that are asked to implement them in their managerial decisions. And in most cases, it is these very same corporations that directly cause environmental damage; they are the direct perpetrators of environmental crimes. This creates a situation where multinational corporations, while preserving their power, enjoy limited accountability before national courts due to their multilayered, transnational operations, and are in a similar position before international courts because they are not recognized as subjects of international law. This situation is beginning to change as national environmental laws and regulations have increasingly been raised to hold corporations accountable for some of their acts. However, due to their limited possibility to consider some of the most serious, transnational environmental harms, the interdisciplinary approach between international criminal law (ICL) and environmental law, insufficiently explored, could offer some practical avenues on how to shape corporate liability in the context of climate change and great environmental harm.