ABSTRACT
Principle 13 of the Rio Declaration proclaims that states shall ‘cooperate in an expeditious and more determined manner to develop further international law regarding liability and compensation for adverse effects of environmental damage caused by activities within their jurisdiction or control to areas beyond their jurisdiction’. The law on liability and compensation in this context essentially determines who will pay for the consequences of environmental damage. Liability and redress in the context of the protocol negotiations concerned the question of what would happen should the transboundary movement of living modified organisms (LMOs) result in damage. The protocol negotiations could be said to be pre-emptive in the sense that they were taking place in the absence of any specific known incidents of damage caused by the transboundary movement of LMOs. An argument often heard against the inclusion of provision for liability in the protocol was that it was unnecessary in view of the existence of general international principles on state responsibility.
