planet's polluters should be put in the dock (world environment court)

[papau]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1070676,00.html


The planet's polluters should be put in the dock

Only a world environment court can curb capitalism's excesses

Michael Meacher
Saturday October 25, 2003
The Guardian

Unseen by most, our world is being transformed at an exponential rate. It is a process driven by unfettered industrial exploitation, growing technological control, soaring population growth and now climate change, the effects of which open up an apocalyptic scenario for the human race. <snip>

What can be done? Clearly, what is needed is a framework of international law that permits the operation of free trade and a competitive world economy, but only within parameters strictly drawn to safeguard our planet. No such system of international environmental governance exists at present, and none is being seriously pursued. The realpolitik in the world economy is a powerfully deregulatory one. The first stirrings of resistance to this rightwing corporate hegemony are being seen in the anti-globalisation movement, but this has yet to be translated into a coherent alternative ideology.

The core of a new international environmental governance needs to be the network of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) that have been negotiated over the past few decades to protect the global environment. There are 200 of them, covering international trade in waste, chemical pollutants, endangered species, ozone depletion, genetically modified organisms and oil spills. Their weaknesses are that they are not readily enforceable, their coverage is fragmentary and there are many policy gaps where no effective MEAs exist at all.
The most important issue is enforceability. MEA dispute settlement procedures have never been used because the multilateral nature of the issues they deal with make the provision for bilateral dispute settlement procedures largely irrelevant. What is really needed is a world environment court that would enforce a global environmental charter.

The right to bring cases before such a court should not be confined to the governments of nation states, but should include public interest bodies, notably NGOs. The court should also have permanent specialist bodies to investigate damage to the global environment, whether inflicted or threatened, with powers to subpoena evidence and prosecute individuals and corporate bodies. This would only work if properly funded. However, if the fines imposed on corporate offenders were recycled, the court's investigative and legal work would quickly become self-financing.

<snip>
Michael Meacher was UK environment minister from 1997-2003. This is an edited version of a lecture he will deliver today at the Victoria Rooms in Bristol

[La_Serpiente]

1. The US is not even going to join this thing

I don't think any administration -Democratic or Republican would join this organization. It would be nice, but I don't think so

Clinton signed the Kyoto treaty, but it was shut down by the Senate, I think , 97-0.

[NoMoreRedInk]

2. That's bipartisanship. 97-0??? Wow!!*******

nm

[papau]

3. Senate vote was a game - we wanted the changes that Kyoto now has

depending on your faith in the GOP

The vote was called in the Senate to strengthen Clinton's hand in his effort to get the modifications now in the treaty,

or, the vote was called to embarrass the Dems