PROTECTION OF THE ENVIRONMENT USING ENVIRONMENTAL LIABILITY AND COMPENSATION SCHEMES IN ETHIOPIA: APPRAISAL OF LAWS

Abstract

The main purpose of this thesis is to investigate the legal frameworks of Ethiopia in relation to providing liability mechanisms to compensate damage to the environment. The starting point is that in case of damages to the natural resources of the environment, adequate legal compensation mechanism aimed at restoring the polluted environment to its natural state should be available. The legal liability for compensating the polluted environment should exist not only for the sake of the relevance that a given environmental media gives for human beings, rather the restoration or compensation mechanism is necessary because nature has an intrinsic value of its own and its existence must not only be compared to the utility it gives for humans. The major means of ensuring environmental remediation measure is by providing legal rules for the purpose of identifying as to what should or should not be done to ensure the recovery or remediation for damage to the environment. The legal frameworks of Ethiopia doesn’t comprehensively provide the mode and assessment of damage to the environment per se. That means, the legal frameworks do not provide, in a clear manner, a means to identify, assess and determine the Extent or the level of harm done to the Environment per se that must be remediated. That means remedy should be available, not only in case of loss or damage on individual financial interest as a result of polluting activities, but also there should be a clear legal mechanism that obliges polluters to undertake recovery activities which are aimed at restoring the polluted Environment. In relation to this issue, even though our laws doesn’t provide a guidance on the mechanisms of restoring a polluted Environment, they do provide us with some insights regarding the possibility that claims could be made for the purpose of redressing the damage done to the environment per-se and orders could be given that are targeted at restoring the polluted Environment, both in case of civil and criminal matters. But here the laws falls short in providing a clear ways and means of determining the parameters for assessing damage to the Environment per-se, the manner and options for restoring the damage and the organs responsible for implementing this measures. Hence, in this research I will investigate the limitations of protecting the environment in providing civil remedies for environmental damage through environmental protection related legal frameworks of Ethiopia. To better analyze the issue at hand the best experiences of a selected country, USA, will be observed in relation to providing separate legal mechanisms of assessing and determining the mode of remediating environmental damage will be studied