Suchergebnisse

In its June 1997 review of the state of the global environment and the implementation of Agenda 21, five years after the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), the UN General Assembly drew a rather gloomy picture. While acknowledging that some progress toward sustainable development had been made, for example, in curbing pollution and slowing the rate of resource degradation in a number of countries, the Assembly's report noted that, overall, trends tended toward continued deterioration. Not surprisingly, therefore, the report also reiterated Agenda 21's call upon, inter alia, multilateral development banks (MDBs) to ensure that development funding "contribute to economic growth, social development and environmental protection in the context of sustainable development." The report, in short, enjoined MDBs to strengthen their commitment to sustainable development.

A striking feature of our times is that private individuals and corporations are engaging increasingly in activities that may result in significant accidental damage to the transnational environment. The international community has responded to this phenomenon by strengthening the transnational accountability of the private actors. Significant efforts have been made to obtain wide international acceptance of the principle of "equal right of access," that is, the right of the actual or potential victim of transnational pollution to have recourse, for the purposes of both prevention and compensation, to the national authorities that exercise jurisdiction or control over the private actor concerned. A similar endeavor is discernible towards ensuring, at least in certain cases, that the private actor will maintain minimal financial resources for compensating victims of accidental transnational pollution damage.