A crime according to Micheal Allen may be defined as “an act which contravenes the law and which may be followed by prosecution in criminal proceedings with the attendant consequence, following conviction, of punishment”. A simple statement like this gives rise to enormous confusions and dilemmas while handling the “Environmental offences” since these have been classified under Tort laws in the English Judgment system, which clearly explains that the environmental crimes can be compensated and is not a crime in pure sense. This indicates that all the Environmental offences bear a price tag that can be defined as a “negligence or a nuisance or a trespass” and thus with a penalty one has the freedom to pollute or cause any environmental offence. The strict liabilities are the liabilities for harm caused by the defendant, regardless of “mens rea” or intent, concept is applied in the English Judicial system for the Environmental offences and these normally are applied to civil, and not to criminal law, the basic here is coherent in understanding that the Environmental offenses are treated less seriously as criminal offenses and thus there is a civil law way of approach, very different from the Criminal law. An example can be the Southport Corpn v Esso Petroleum Co Ltd case where an oil tanker stranded in a river estuary discharged certain quantity of oil to prevent further damage and this polluted the foreshore owned by the Corporation. The courts considered the application of the principles of trespass, public and private nuisance and negligence. This type of decision is a very common approach to solve Environmental issues and the English Courts rule deal with all these offenses addressing them under the Tort laws. The courts in the above mentioned case decided that “any such action should be pleaded in negligence”. If as a result of the negligent navigation or management of a ship pollution occurs causing damage to the claimant, the claimant will be able to obtain compensation from the owner or the charterer of the vessel if the negligent act resulting in the pollution was the proximate cause of the loss or damage.” The situation here clearly has no consideration towards the punishment of the owner of the vessel in any other form than compensation, not to the environment or to the marine life lost but to the claimant.
While the Environmental crimes can be defined in a broader sense as “illegal acts which directly harm the environment” and include even illegal trade in wildlife; smuggling of ozonedepleting substances (ODS) such as CFCs, illicit trade in hazardous waste that also includes shipping across of the wastes to the poorer nations, illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing, contributing to the extinction of various fishes; and illegal logging and the associated trade in stolen timber. The victimless and less Environment being unaffected directly in major cases and thus attaining a lesser priority than other crimes, actually needs more attention as this deceptive negligible crime may not be affecting one individual directly, however it might be very slowly poisoning the whole community, the whole area and if unchecked the whole mankind can be put on stake. For example, illegal logging contributes to deforestation. It deprives forest communities of vital livelihoods, causes ecological problems like flooding, and is a major contributor to climate change since this contributes up to one-fifth of greenhouse gas emissions. Environmental crime is currently one of the most profitable forms of criminal activity and it is no surprise that organized criminal groups are attracted to its high profit margins and English courts need to realize these as Environmental offenses than just blaming them to be under Tort laws and focusing on prioritizing compensation for the harm suffered for the environment directly or indirectly, to prevent harm, to internalize costs to the producers by imposing costs of Full environmental restoration or remediation, to provide an incentive to improve environmental performance, to express social condemnation of environmentally harmful behavior, but few crimes are beyond just pricing the worth of them.
Environmental crimes have also shown to be lacking the uniformity. There have been different ways in which environmental crimes are constructed in statuettes, and slight differences between the strictness of liability can be detected between different offenses. The balance is disturbed when corporate offenders might be in breach but are not prosecuted. Thus with time things are improving and the importance of Corporate liability was realized and in various issues like National Rivers Authority v. Alfred Mc Alpine Homes East Ltd [1994] Env :R 198, the court held the company liable for not training and supervising its employees! This is truly remarkable that the perception is definitely changing. In 1986 Vogel characterized the British style to be “ an absence of statutory standards, minimal use od prosecution, a flexible enforcement strategy, considerable administrative discretion, decentralized implementation, close co operation between regularots and the regulated, and restrictions on the ability of non-industry constituents to participate in the regulatory process.”
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