City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Dissertations and Theses City College of New York 2011 Climate Torts and Ecocide in the Context of Proposals for an International Environmental Court Patrick Foster CUNY City College How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_etds_theses/40 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] Climate Torts and Ecocide in the Context of Proposals for an International Environmental Court Patrick Foster Graduating June, 2011 Advisor: Professor Jürgen Dedring Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of International Affairs at the City College of New York TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ..........................................................................................................................................................3 CHAPTER ONE: NECESSITY AND FEASIBILITY...................................................................................4 CAUSES OF ACTION AND THEORIES OF JUSTICE...............................................................................................5 DIPLOMATIC THEORY IN THE CONTEXT OF ENVIRONMENTAL TREATY MAKING ...........................................7 CHAPTER TWO: INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL TORTS: CLIMATE CHANGE LITIGATION .......................................................................................................................................................9 PRINCIPLES OF ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE APPLIED TO INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES ..................................11 THE CURRENT INTERNATIONAL JUDICIAL FRAMEWORK...............................................................................14 A. International Court of Justice: Getting to Court.................................................................................15 B. Regional Human Rights Court: The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ..................................25 C. International Criminal Court: Subject Matter Competency...............................................................27 D. International Tribunal of the Law of the Seas.....................................................................................32 POTENTIAL CASE AT ITLOS ...........................................................................................................................34 A. Factual Introduction..............................................................................................................................35 B. Legal Principles.....................................................................................................................................37 C. Applicable International Law...............................................................................................................43 CONCLUSIONS ON INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL TORTS ......................................................................45 CHAPTER THREE: INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL CRIME: ECOCIDE.........................47 THE ROOTS OF ECOCIDE..................................................................................................................................52 A. Vietnam: International Environmental Warfare .................................................................................55 B. Iraq: Civil Environmental Warfare......................................................................................................56 C. Ecuador: Private Environmental Warfare ..........................................................................................59 TOWARD A NEW FORMULATION OF ECOCIDE ................................................................................................61 A. Richard Falk: Genesis of an Idea.........................................................................................................61 B. A Scholarly Mini-Movement: The scholarship on Ecocide in the 1990’s..........................................64 C. Mark Drumbl: Elaboration in a New International Order ................................................................68 CONCLUSIONS ON THE GENESIS OF ECOCIDE .................................................................................................70 CHAPTER FOUR: PROSPECTS FOR AN IEC..........................................................................................72 A NEW DIPLOMACY FOR A NEW CONVENTION FOR A NEW COURT .............................................................72 ENVIRONMENTAL DIPLOMACY .......................................................................................................................72 A. History of the Protocols ........................................................................................................................74 B. The Precautionary Principle.................................................................................................................78 C. Multilateral Diplomacy.........................................................................................................................82 D. Innovative Approaches .........................................................................................................................84 PROPOSALS FOR AN IEC ..................................................................................................................................86 CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................................................................95 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..............................................................................................................................................96 2 Abstract This thesis is an exploration of two questions that are neither novel nor lacking in exploration: Is an International Environmental Court (IEC) needed? Is such a court feasible? Proposals for an IEC have a rich history, are well founded and numerous. On the issue of necessity, this thesis attempts to pull together historical and current information on two distinct areas of international environmental law and use these analyses to contextualize the need for an international environmental tribunal. Arguments for and against an IEC are presented within a discussion of environmental diplomacy. This thesis begins with a legal discussion of potential climate change actions in current international fora. This section is an attempt to add a layer of context on what the international legal landscape looks like for environmental actions while presenting one of two broad areas of environmental redress: a civil action. The analysis then moves on to discuss an international cause of action debated and advocated for over the past half century: ecocide. The need for a singular cause of action to fit the particularities of intentional environmental harm inflicted upon peoples is used to present the second broad area of environmental redress necessitated by international affairs: a criminal action. The analysis then moves from necessity to feasibility, beginning with an overview of proposals for an international agreement to create an environmental tribunal adequate to address the needs presented in the preceding sections. This analysis draws on international relations theory in its conclusion that such a tribunal is necessary and potential, dependent on legally cognizable factors working in tandem with considerable advocacy. The belief that the potentially catastrophic human ability to affect the global environment has existed at least since the reality of nuclear holocaust threatened during the Cold War, is currently at issue in relation to climate change, and is likely to be an ongoing reality in a quickly developing, technologically hyper-driven, globally interconnected, resource-scarce future underpins this analysis. The need to have international legal mechanisms to protect those at the fringes of these processes who are often the most harmed by environmental degradation lends urgency to the project of investigating the feasibility of creating an IEC tasked with ruling on agreed international environmental norms and rights. 3 Chapter One: Necessity and Feasibility This thesis is an exploration of two questions that are neither novel nor lacking in exploration: Is an International Environmental Court (IEC) needed? Is such a court feasible? Proposals for an IEC have a rich history, are well founded and numerous. On the issue of necessity, this thesis attempts to pull together historical and current information on two distinct areas of international environmental law and use these analyses to contextualize the need for an international environmental tribunal. Arguments for and against an IEC are presented within a discussion of environmental diplomacy. This thesis begins with a legal discussion of potential climate change actions in current international fora. This section is an attempt to add a layer of context on what the international legal landscape looks like for environmental actions while presenting one of two broad areas of environmental redress: a civil action. The analysis then moves on to discuss an international cause of action debated and advocated for over the past half century: ecocide. The need for a singular cause of action to fit the particularities of intentional environmental harm inflicted upon peoples is used to present the second broad area of environmental redress