International Judges: Environment Laws Not Enforced

Barry James
International Herald Tribune

August 28, 2002

One hundred and thirty chief justices and senior judges urged
environmentalists Tuesday to take miscreant corporations and backsliding
governments to court to protect the Earth's resources.

They called for bolstering the capacity of legal systems to make it easier for the public, particularly the poor who are often the hardest-hit victims of environmental crimes, to gain access to the courts.

There was even a suggestion for the eventual creation of an international environment court, according to Pius Langa, deputy chief justice of South Africa. "The discussion is just starting," he said.

While delegates from 190 countries, the most ever to attend a UN meeting, continued to haggle over language at the World Summit on Sustainable Development here, the judges argued that there were already enough environmental laws and what was lacking was the will to implement them.

The question of public access to information, including legal information, is becoming a contentious issue at the conference. Many nongovernmental organizations and civic groups who are meeting in a Global Forum several kilometers away from the main conference site are asserting that the event has been hijacked by corporate interests and that the peoples' voice is not being heard.

In contrast to the remote Global Forum, an exhibition by the luxury carmaker BMW dominates a square just outside the main conference center of the summit meeting. Industry bosses lobby the summiteers from their headquarters in a nearby luxury hotel.

Sue Markham, a spokeswoman for the UN, said the organization welcomed participation from as many representatives of civil society as possible and that the only reason to exclude people was the 6,000- seat capacity of the conference center.

Nevertheless, frustration was building and the police were preparing for possibly violent protests by the militant Landless Peoples Movement when at least 104 heads of state and government arrive for the main part of the summit meeting this weekend.

Protests would be aimed at sending "a clear and unambiguous message to our leaders that ordinary people can no longer tolerate the current environmentally destructive practices," said Gordon Bispham one of the organizers of the Global Forum. "We can no longer tolerate the continued neglect of the poor by our political leaders. We are tired of broken promises."

The issue of access to information is analyzed in a new study by the World Resources Institute, a Washington environmental group, which found that in nine countries it studied, information about the environment was often kept secret or made public too late for people to influence large projects. As a result, communities often learn about new mining, drilling or tree-stripping operations when the bulldozers arrived.

Elena Petkova, lead author of the study, said that when citizens participated in decisions, the final outcome was invariably better. She said the findings held true for countries of very different levels of income and development.

Despite the U.S. refusal to participate in the International Criminal Court, a senior American judge, Clifford Wallace of the U.S. Court of Appeals, attended the meeting of senior judges here. The United States also helped finance the panel, which was organized by the United Nations Environment Program.

Klaus Toepfer, the program's director general, has long argued that the Johannesburg summit meeting should focus on implementing treaties and agreements that were struck at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro ten years ago and in subsequent meetings.

The environment program's director for policy development and law, Bakary Kante, said a greater emphasis on applying treaties through national courts would offer opportunities for nongovernmental organizations that want to hold multinationals accountable for their environmental and human rights behavior.

On the question of a possible international environmental court, Kante said such a court could pose a conflict with the United Nations International Court in The Hague, which is authorized to hear environmental cases.

Arthur Chaskalson, the chief justice of South Africa who headed the meeting, said judges could play a key role in achieving sustainable development because most countries already had environmental laws, even if the will to apply them was lacking.

"The problem is a lack of awareness of these rights and particularly a lack of access to the law," Chaskalson said.

In a statement to the leaders attending the summit meeting, the judges said, "The fragile state of the global environment requires the judiciary, as the guardian of the rule of law, to boldly and fearlessly implement and enforce applicable international and national laws, which in the field of environment and sustainable development will assist in alleviating poverty and sustaining an enduring civilization."

Experts said it was becoming increasingly evident that efforts to crack down on pollution, challenge environmentally harmful practices and comply with international agreements on issues such as hazardous waste or the trade in endangered species were being undermined because of the weak legal systems in many countries.

"We have over 500 international and regional agreements, treaties and deals covering everything from the protection of the ozone layer to the conservation of the oceans and seas," Toepfer said. "Almost all, if not all, countries have national environmental laws, too. But unless they are complied with, unless they are enforced, then they are little more than symbols, tokens, paper tigers."

Meanwhile, the environment organization Greenpeace opened a dramatic photo exhibit on the environmental tragedy that beset the city of Bhopal after an explosion at a Union Carbide pesticide plant in 1984 caused the release of lethal gasses in the world's worst industrial disaster.

About 20,000 people died at the time, and the effects of the disaster are visible in the subsequent generation, Greenpeace said. The group said ground water in the region was still contaminated and the abandoned site littered with stockpiles of obsolete pesticides and toxic waste.

Copyright 2002 International Herald Tribune