From the Legal Personality of Nature to the Recognition of Ecological Damages: an Analysis of the French Legal Reform After the Erika Oil Spill ______
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
From the Legal Personality of Nature to the Recognition of Ecological Damages: An Analysis of the French Legal Reform after the Erika Oil Spill ___________________________________________________ Jérôme Orlhac | 260558947 | April 25, 2014 McGill University | Prof. Peter Brown | Prof. Mark Goldberg Civilization and Environment | ENVR630 | Winter 2014 1 Abstract Compared to other branches of the Law,1 environmental law is considered to be a recent branch since its evolution followed the major scientific discoveries of the post-Second World War era, the growth of the population, and the ever-increasing negative impacts of Mankind on the environment. The doctrine written by eminent scholars has always played an important role in the evolution of environmental law. Traditionally, through the concept of legal personality, jurists recognize the rights of someone (including private entities and public institutions) to fight for its rights and therefore to stand in court. The question to give rights to Nature has been in the centre of the work of William O. Douglas and Christopher D. Stone. The idea developed in the 1970s by these two American scholars is to grant rights to Nature per se. Rights of Nature are now part of several legal systems, notably in the Ecuadorian Constitution. In the meantime, the French legal system has barely changed since the Napoleonic era and the Code civil. However, an environmental catastrophe may have pulled the trigger and started an important legal (r)evolution. Indeed, when the tanker Erika sank of the French coast causing major environmental impacts in 1999, the limits of the French environmental laws were pointed out. In a recent court decision, the court recognized a pure ecological damage (préjudice écologique pur), alongside the traditional individual, moral, and economic damages. This is considered to be a precedent in the French legal system. Yet this jurisprudence may be overturned in the future. In order to reinforce this major step, a law is necessary. A bill is currently debated in the French Assembly. It is necessary to analyse its content and its impact in order to understand what could potentially be considered ecological damage, how the damage can be compensated, and who can be compensated for the damage. But the recognition of ecological damage does not go as far as the recognition of a legal personality for “natural objects.” 1 The Law is sometimes depicted as a tree with different branches: family law, criminal law, contract law, administrative law, constitutional law, and so on and so forth, the trunk being the Law with a capital “L”, defined “as a general and established entity” (Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1996). Environmental law is harder to delimit since it is in its very own nature to impact several other branches. 2 Table of Contents Abstract ..............................................................................................................................2 1. Introduction.................................................................................................................4 2. Rights for Nature ........................................................................................................6 2.1. William O. Douglas’ Notion of Wilderness and its Limits....................................6 2.2. Nature’s Legal Personality .....................................................................................9 2.3. The Contemporary Developments on Nature’s Rights ........................................11 3. The Erika Jurisprudence and the Limits of French Environmental Law...........14 3.1. The Facts and Legal Issues of the Case................................................................14 3.2. The Impact of the Solution of the Case................................................................16 4. Towards the Recognition of a Préjudice Écologique in the Code Civil.................17 4.1. Civil Liability and the Recognition of the Ecological damage ............................17 4.2. The Judicial Procedure .........................................................................................20 4.3. The Compensation of the Ecological Damage and Nature’s Legal Personality ..21 Conclusion........................................................................................................................23 Annex 1.............................................................................................................................25 Annex 2.............................................................................................................................26 Bibliography.....................................................................................................................27 3 In reality there is a single integral community of the Earth that includes all its component members whether human or other than human. In this community every being has its own role to fulfill, its own dignity, its inner spontaneity. Every being has its own voice. Every being declares itself to the entire universe. Every being enters into communion with other beings. This capacity for relatedness, for presence to other beings, for spontaneity in action, is a capacity possessed by every mode of being throughout the entire universe. So too every being has rights to be recognized and revered. Trees have tree rights, insects have insect rights, rivers have river rights, mountains have mountain rights.2 Thomas Berry, The Great Work (1999) 1. Introduction The introduction of a paper starting by a conclusion is not common but, here, the conclusion is from another author. Indeed, as a conclusion of his interesting book advocating for the protection of trees, the head gardener of the Versailles estate, Alain Baraton, writes: On attribue souvent, et peut-être à tort, à Antoine de Saint-Exupéry3 cette maxime que je fais mienne : On n’hérite pas la terre de ses parents, on l’emprunte à ses enfants. Il en est de même pour les arbres des villes, des campagnes et des forêts. Ils ne nous appartiennent pas, nous en sommes juste les conservateurs et notre mission première est de permettre à nos descendants de les contempler. Il devient donc urgent d’offrir aux arbres remarquables un statut juridique qui les protège vraiment et définitivement de la folie des hommes !4 Alain Baraton is far from being a jurist but he understands that the Law has a role to play in the protection of our environment. He understands that the current laws are not entirely fulfilling this goal. And above all, he understands that there is a need to recognize the right of some “natural objects.”5 According to the French philosopher Luc Ferry, there are three forms of 2 Thomas Berry, The Great Work (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1999) at 4-5. 3 French writer, poet, and aviator, author of The Little Prince (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1943). 4 Alain Baraton, La Haine de l’arbre n’est pas une fatalité (Arles: Actes Sud, 2013) at 148. 5 The terms “natural objects” will be used throughout this paper since they are the terms coined by Christopher D. Stone in his famous article “Should Trees Have Standing?” Christopher D Stone, Should Trees Have Standing? Law, Morality, and the Environment, 3rd ed (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010) at 1. 4 environmentalism.6 In the first form, “au travers de la nature, c’est encore et toujours l’homme qu’il faut protéger, fût-ce de lui-même, lorsqu’il joue aux apprentis sorciers.”7 This can be considered as the anthropocentric form of écologie. The second form gives a “signification morale à certains êtres non humains. Elle consiste à prendre au sérieux le principe ‘utilitariste’ selon lequel il faut non seulement rechercher l’intérêt propre des hommes, mais de manière plus générale tendre à diminuer au maximum la somme des souffrances dans le monde ainsi qu’à augmenter autant que faire se peut la quantité de bien-être.”8 This could be considered the utilitarian form of écologie. Finally, the third form refers to the deep ecology movement. According to Luc Ferry, “ce n’est plus l’homme, considéré comme centre du monde, qu’il faut au premier chef protéger de lui-même, mais bien le cosmos comme tel, qu’on doit défendre contre les hommes.”9 This can be considered as the biocentric form. The biocentric approach is related to the “renaissance du sentiment de compassion à l’égard des êtres naturels [s’accompagnant] toujours d’une dimension critique à l’égard de la modernité.”10 Environmental laws are a mix of the two first forms: the anthropocentric and the utilitarian approaches. This paper will be focused on the third, the anthropocentric form, and more precisely on how the law may change under its influence. As the priest and theologian Thomas Berry writes, “ecology is not a part of law; law is an extension of ecology”11 which implies that the Law needs to be adapted to the complexity of the environment. It needs to take into account the diversity of the ecosystems. Human beings have a role to play in this scheme since “humans are part of Earth’s life systems, not separate from it.”12 The goal is obvious since the “violence against our environment is [a] form of destruction that implicates our very survival.” Therefore, “our real alma mater is the Earth, without whom we are lost. Yet man’s most devastating drives are acts of aggression against her.”13 Through the idea of recognizing rights to Nature, recognizing a legal personality to Nature and therefore allowing 6 Écologie in French refers to both the science