Environmental Damage in Armed Conflict. To What Extent Do the Remedies Available for Environmental Damage in Armed Conflict Reflect the Polluter Pays Principle? The Cases of the Jiyeh Power Station and the Niger Delta Conflict.

Abstract

The first instance of widespread public attention to environmental damage caused in armed conflicts was sparked by the use of toxic herbicide Agent Orange during the Vietnam war. Today, with the recent inclusion of the topic on the programme of work of the International Law Commission, protection of the environment in relation to armed conflict is once again a highly relevant subject in international law. This thesis investigates what remedies are available when environmental harm has been caused in an armed conflict and evaluates to what extent these remedies reflect the polluter pays principle, understood through a lens of environmental justice theory. The issue can be placed in the intersection of the law of armed conflict, international environmental law and the law of state responsibility.

A case study method is employed where two cases of environmental damage caused in armed conflict are examined to see to what extent the polluter pays principle is reflected in the remedies available. The first case study of the 2006 Israeli bombing of the LebaneseJiyeh power station shows that state responsibility is a difficult remedy to reach in cases of environmental damage in an international armed conflict. Notably, the examined rules for environmental protection available under the law of armed conflict are vague, and tend to set high demands for establishing a breach. The second case study, which examines the ongoing internal conflict in the Niger Delta of Nigeria shows how non-international armed conflicts present challenges which render state responsibility or responsibility of non-state actors an unlikely remedy to be achieved.

Both case studies show that while it may not be suitable to base state liability on the loose and often goal-oriented provisions of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), the framework for cooperation which they establish can serve to ensure a higherdegree of actual environmental remediation when damage has been caused in an armed conflict. Thus, while neither system of remedies is capable of fully reflecting the polluter pays principle on its own, the thesis concludes that a combination of remedies under MEAs and state responsibility can be useful when going forward.