The Concepts of Suspended Sovereignty and Responsibility to Protect

 

    The statutory regulation of  storage, handling and disposal of hazardous materials is related to occupational hazards and not really part of  environmental law. Most important statutes deal with handling of hazardous wastes, disposal and remediation.  When some materials turn hazardous due to prevailing  conditions owing to extended time of storage in an unregulated situation and in an  unsafe place and finally reacts with the atmospheric elements to turn into unstable and dangerous compounds can become ticking bombs and result in an environmental crisis causing severe pollution of air, water and soil. 

    The Beirut blast is clearly an environmental and ecological crisis that can affect the air quality, soil and water resources in and around the city. It is not clear if it will cause any disruption of air quality within the region.  The incident has exposed to the world the total ignorance, neglect and criminal negligence of the Lebanese government in handling hazardous materials. Ammonium Nitrate has many uses including the making of explosives. The port authorities have clearly ignored several warnings and neglected the storage of a reactive and flammable compound by leaving it unregulated for several years without putting in place requisite safety standards despite its proximity to general population. It simply  calls for strict liability on the part of the Government without none else to take the blame.  In the case of Lebanon, the storage of such volatile materials and exposing them to atmospheric elements for more than six years and thus endangering the lives of those living within the vicinity places the liability  directly on the port authorities.  Citizens have a right to sue the government and claim compensation for the damage incurred by them as several citizens were left homeless.  But, does the government have the wherewithal to compensate its citizens either monetarily or otherwise? It seems it is helpless as one follows the various news articles published on the internet and watching the recent interview of  Minister of Economy and Trade Mr. Raoul Nehme by  BBC’s Stephen Sackur.  It is more than evident that  only there is no one in the government willing to take responsibility for the act of   criminal negligence committed against its people of with every one of the Ministers passing the buck and claiming international monetary aid without accountability.  Given the state of economy in the country with poverty levels rising, and failure of the government to provide basic amenities including electricity and drinking water to its citizens, Lebanon can very well be declared a fragile and failed state calling for intervention by the international community to save the nation from complete breakdown. A fragile and failed state threatens public health care infrastructure, thus risking global healthcare systems considering the COVID -19 pandemic. It further  destabilizes regional security and requires humanitarian intervention by the UN and international community. 

    In this light, I wish to state here that the  paper in this post was written by me  in the year 2012 and published it while I was spending some time in the US.  I just noticed that  this paper was hacked to pieces and I had to edit the same for the purpose of this post. The print out that I normally store seems to have vanished and therefore, I do not have an earlier copy to compare and edit. In the event of any factual errors in the paper, it may have been due to my oversight in reviewing. I have not really updated the paper with any recent information.  The content of the paper reflects my thinking on the subject that prevailed at that point in time.  I am posting it here with the hope that there may be readers who think on the same lines as I do for the benefit of the helpless citizens of Lebanon and similar nations facing  serious environmental crisis. The international community needs to come together to set an example of how international monetary aid can demand absolute accountability and transparency from governments or nations receiving such aid and assistance.

 Working Paper on 'Making the United Nations work for Global Commons': Amending the UN Charter

Corrigendum to earlier blogpost titled "When Economic interests override Environmental Concerns"

The title “When economic interests override environmental concerns” in one of my blog posts is an objective claim referring to the exclusive issue of demanding a social impact assessment for the Chennai-Salem Corridor at a stage when the original project had been commissioned and was clearly underway. My title presumably does not endorse the view that environmental norms need to be diluted to attract investments.   In retrospect, I am now convinced that the apt title for the blogpost would have been “When political interests override environmental concerns”. The title and the blog post express the futility in reopening environmental and social assessment of a project, that has changed its targets and direction midway to suit political and vested interests. The phrase. ‘Economic interests” specifically refers to those investors who have been awarded contracts in the Bharatmala project and any reopening of assessments could lead to stoppage of work merely because a major route within the state of Tamil Nadu has been changed to suit political purposes.  Essentially, strategic environmental assessment needs to be completed before commission of the projects and contracts have been awarded. It would be legally incorrect to subject the original project whose EIA is completed, at least on paper, to large scale changes that can affect a different region that has not been assessed for environmental and social impacts in the original EIA report.

 

The blog post merely espouses the case of those investors who may face financial constraints if the contracts have been stalled for reasons that are political. It further believes the best option available to all stakeholders would be to proceed with the implementation of original project where environmental impact assessment and social impact assessment have been completed.  Yet, as on date, from details available on the internet, it appears that contracts have been awarded for only 27% of the project and the rest have been delayed for several reasons including COVID-19.

 

Despite all good intentions, the pandemic has brought to standstill many a project including large scale infrastructure projects. In the interregnum, it may be time to review the project and the EIA reports prepared in relation to the entire Bharatmala project with an inquiry into the shelving of Chennai-Madurai Economic Corridor and if the project is to be recommenced post-pandemic, it must follow the original project plan of creating the Chennai-Madurai Economic Corridor, instead of the Chennai-Salem Highway. In any case, acquisition of land for such large-scale infrastructure projects should follow after an extensive EIA report has been prepared since the report shall list out if any agricultural lands are being acquired for the purpose and if any ecologically sensitive areas are being threatened. Further, the EIA report needs to list out any mitigation and adaptation plans are in place subsequent to such acquisition. Acquisition of any land for such large-scale infrastructure projects should be within norms listed for land-use change and if such changes can be justified with a cost-benefit analysis.