Environmental Victims, Access to Justice and the Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

Victims of environmental pollution and degradation, especially those in the developing world, face significant barriers and/or challenges in their quest for justice. These challenges are systemic, arising from inadequate legal frameworks, weak institutional capacity and other wider governance and structural deficits. This is exacerbated by the fact that by reason of inaction on the part of regulatory agencies, private individuals are often pitted against much better resourced defendants such as multinational corporations within under-resourced systems riddled with corruption and prone to inordinate delays in the litigation process. Even the prospect of success in a limited number of high-profile cases through transnational litigation has been dealt a huge blow owing to recent decisions under the US Alien Tort Claims Act, a forum previously thought to be one of the most promising. Similarly, while there has been some positive jurisprudence emerging from regional human rights institutions in Africa, enforcement of these decisions remains a huge challenge.