ABSTRACT
Globalization has transformed, and to a remarkable degree been driven by, the growing role and operations of multi-national corporations and national industries at national and international scale. Thus, the fusion of international and domestic economic orders, and the subjection of their operations to certain standards and principles in respect of sustainable development – following the rapid change in institutional factors allied to the progressive process of globalization has now obliged companies and their associates to accountability, especially in matters of environment and human rights – the twin vistas of sustainable development. It is now obvious that a transformed governance of environmental value system, such as globalization of environmental law, requires compliance to legal principles and rules of sustainable development embedded in an environmental value system. Therefore this work examines the nature, viability and operations of Corporate Responsibility (CR) within environmental protection. After elucidating on the concept of environmental protection and law, it treats the legal literature, and jurisprudence of environmental protection and Corporate Environmental Responsibility (CER). The ideas and legalism of obligation and liability, and the practice of Corporate Environmental Responsibility in terms of pollution of environment are largely resulting in environmental crisis in Nigeria. The study adopts the descriptive, analytical, explanatory and comparative study design in reviewing the CER principles and practices in other jurisdictions. Reliance was placed on primary source materials such as legislative Acts and other legal instruments of both international and national laws. Also, secondary source materials relied on will include case law, textbooks and other legal research and academic materials such as journals, magazines, Internet sources, law reports, unpublished cases, DVDs, etc. It outlines the pitfalls, characterization and issues of corporate environmental responsibility as they affect environmental protection and development, including human rights and socio-economic progress. This work draws attention to the incidence of corporate responsibility and human rights problems in Nigeria’s oil producing areas known as the Niger -Delta, and the generic experience in other parts of the country. It has investigated the limit of law in the dimension of Corporate Responsibility towards the environment, and assesses the legal regime and practice in Nigeria. The study recommends that legislations meant to regulate CER practices by MNCs especially with legal means and methods of improvement as well as domestic firms need a total and complete overhaul and that government and environmental protection agencies will do well by creating general awareness on the need to be socially responsible to the environment and the dangers of acting otherwise. The study concludes on the need to promote CER values bearing in mind that the success of compliance with it will largely be determined by a positive attitudinal change of firms and the government to societal needs and sustainable developments above the orthodox position of maximum profit-making and economic interests/benefits to the detriment of the society.
CHAPTER ONE
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
1.1.Background to the Study
This study is an analysis of the concept of corporate environmental responsibility, its laws and a critical examination of its practice level in Nigeria, showing that government and corporations may no longer plead it as a mere voluntary self-regulatory venture and consideration on international legal norms of a near soft law. The importance of corporate environmental responsibility in any legal and social system cannot be overemphasized. It is indeed, one of the lessons of globalization and the new international economic order, now metamorphosing into a legal order with increasing awareness that the enforcement and achievement of human rights require legal mechanism for responsibility and liability of corporations, as well as states and individuals. This is undeniably, a cornerstone in the realization of sustainable development, nationally and internationally. The importance of such a legal system lies not only in the protection of civil liberties and prosecution of criminals but also in using responsibility regime as a means of promoting and advancing fair, just and efficient relationship between communities and corporations, for the sustainability of environment and guarantee of human rights and development for the citizenry.
International minimum standards have emerged, and have set the benchmark for the domestic enforcement of human rights. Judicially and theoretically, these standards include the duty of care and the liability for breach of states and corporations in the dimension of environmental protection.[1] As it develops, international environmental law raises main issues already contained in international human rights law. In environmental protection, questions related to the existence and application of liability and responsibility law and the expected role of individuals, to the state and corporations in the legal process have raised analogous issues to those within the realm of international human rights law. These issues are closely related, overlapping and interoperable in the developing activities of environmental legal systems. However, the development of international human rights law predated environmental law and all the elements that flow from it, such as corporate responsibility and liability doctrine. It has been affirmed that human rights law provides a rich source of experience for the understanding and applicability of environmental law from which the doctrine of corporate responsibility sprang.[2]
Therefore, the issues of the responsibility or liabilities of corporations for environmental damages or activities negatively affecting the environment, the question of proceedings that may be instituted and undertaken are herein raised. This approach is explored further, illustrating that another emerging legal principle, very widely accepted even as novel as it is, in some countries, is the notion of Corporate Environmental Responsibility.
1.1.1. Conceptual Definition of Environment
The concept of environment is as old as nature itself. It is a composite term referring to condition in which organisms live, and it is the living source of life[3]. Environment has been defined by several scholars, authors, as well as statutory and case laws[4]. In the analysis made by Swamy, environment as a composite term refers to conditions in which organisms consisting of air, water, food, sunlight, etc; thrive and become living sources of life for all the living and non-living beings including plant life. The term also includes atmospheric temperature, wind and its velocity.[5] It has been seen as both conditions and surroundings, and thus referred to mean the circumstances that surrounds one; the totality of circumstances surrounding an organization or group of organisms especially the combination of external physical conditions that affect and influence growth, development and survival of organisms, as well as the complex of social and cultural conditions affecting the nature of an individual or community.[6] Osibanjo sees it as man’s immediate surroundings (that is water, air, land including associated living and non-living resources) which provides support system for mankind.[7] According to Edward Ekpo and Wali, while admonishing that any attempt to conceive a universal definition of environmental law without understanding first, the meaning of “environment” and “law” would render such approach not only difficult but vacillating, in making reference to Thornton and Beckwith’s writing, they criticized Albert Einstein, the greatest physicist of the century for limiting the expansive nature of environment in his statement thus: “environment is everything that isn’t me”. According to them, Einstein did aim at telling the world that there is hardly any structure which is not part of the environment, and hardly any activity that does not have environmental impact. It is submitted that even as Einstein however talked about the complex nature of environment, he was slightly wrong when he excluded himself as part of environment. This is because man is an essential part of the, or sub-media of environment. Man lives, breeds, exploits and breathes the whole of the environment.
[1] M.Uibopuu, “The Internationally Guaranteed Right of an Individual to a Clean Environment” 1 Comparative Law Yearbook (1977), p. 101; W. Gormley, “The Legal Obligation of the International Community to Guarantee a Pure and Decent Environment: The Expansion of Human Right Norms” 3 Georgetown International Environmental Law Review (1991) p. 85.
[2] See P. Sands, Principles of International Environmental Law, 2nd edn; United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 292.
[3] N. M. Swamy, Textbook on Environmental Law, Hyderabad: Asia Law House, 2004, p. 1.
[4] See for example, the National Environmental Standards and Regulatory Enforcement Agency Act No. 25 of 2007. See also the United Kingdom Environmental Protection Act as cited in the body of this essay. For case law reference, see the case of Goa Foundation & Anor. vs. The Konkan Railway Corporation & Ors (AIR 1992 Bom. 71 (422 – 477) DB where the Division Bench of the Indian Court viewed environment as all-encompassing nature that affects human beings and to the extent that the destruction of it is tantamount to violation of human rights .
[5] N. Swamy, Op.cit.
[7] O. Osibanjo, “Industrial Pollution, Worker’s Health and the Environment,” 1998, in A. Oshuntogun (ed), “Poverty, Health and the Nigerian Environment”, FEDEN Lagos, pp. 150 – 165, in P. Z. Cletus, A. F. Okilo and A. Clinton, “An Evaluation of Community Relations Impact in Managing Environmental Related Crisis in the Niger Delta”, European Journal of Business and Management, Vol. VI, No.12, 2014.
