Angus Nurse sets out the legal routes for remedying corporate environmental harm
- Refers to the Bille and Ogale group litigation, and other cases relating to Shell’s activities in the Niger Delta.
- Due to the challenges of litigation in Global South countries, action targeted at Global North corporate headquarters is emerging as an alternative tactic.
- Our notion of environmental harm needs to move beyond thinking solely of actual crimes and should consider human rights abuses, expanding our ideas of how a duty of care should be applied and considering the harm caused to present and future generations.
- Class actions and group litigation that show how thousands of people may be affected by corporate environmental harms may be more meaningful than criminal prosecution.
While many corporations embrace the concepts of social and environmental responsibility, some claim to do so while at the same time causing considerable environmental damage.
The activities of multinational oil companies in sub-Saharan Africa have been damaging both for the environment and for those communities directly and indirectly affected by their actions. Decades of oil exploration in
