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INECE Partner Leads Call to Philippine
Government to "Clear the Air or Face Lawsuits"
Lawyers
led by Antonio Oposa, president of Batas Kalikasan and
an INECE partner, have asked the Philippine Government
to implement vehicle emission standards and act on complaints
against smoke belchers or face citizen's suits. This
is part of a new initiative to facilitate citizens'
suits under the Clean Air Act in the Philippines (RA
8749), which coincides with a recent order from the
Director of the Environmental Management Bureau to immediately
implement an information campaign on Rule LII of the
Act, dealing with citizen suits.
While
recognizing the primary responsibility of local government
units to deal with environmental problems, the right
for citizen's suit featured in the Act also help push
government officials to take the necessary and appropriate
action to control pollution. Legal actions that may
be considered under Rule LII are for civil and criminal
remedies, and may cover any private or juridical person,
including government owned and controlled corporations,
who violate or fail to comply with the Act's provisions.
The attorneys have already launched a suite, filing
a 30-day Notice to Sue against government officials
for over 1,200 cases of smoke belching reported by the
Bantay Usok Campaign that have not been acted upon and
the governments decision to defer implementation of
an air emissions program.
Oposa
said the government merely issued a summons to less
than half of the 3796 motor vehicles caught smoke belching
by the Bantay Usok campaign launched in Feb. 2000. The
lawyers demanded the serving of special summonses and
public hearing to discuss the top 10 bus companies who
were openly violating the Act. The government has regulatory
powers to keep smoke belching vehicles off the road.
Oposa
said according to the procedures laid down by the law,
the implementing agency should even inform the complaint
of the actions it has taken. If the complaint has not
been acted upon, the complaint automatically converts
into a suit against the erring agency.
"The
government alone cannot implement the law. The citizens
should help in implementing the law, in this case, by
filing complaints against violators," Oposa said.
At least 35 IBP members from the government service
and private practice showed up at the news conference
on Thursday at the IBP office at the Ortigas Center
to show support for the move. A version of this article
first appeared in Philippines Daily Inquirer on Oct.
29, 2002. For more information on this case, contact
Anthony Oposa at oposa@axti.com.
US
Courts Extends Corporate Liability Under International
Law
In
a decision with far-reaching ramifications for corporate
responsibility and the protection of human rights and
the environment, a US federal appellate court ruled
that oil giant Unocal must stand trial for violations
of international law committed by Burma's military during
construction of a gas pipeline. A group of Burmese villagers
sued UNOCAL under the Alien Tort Claims Act (28 U.S.C.
1350), a 1789 law that provides liability for "torts
committed in violation of international law." The
villagers argued that the corporation should be held
liable for the torture, rape, murders, and wide scale
environmental destruction committed by the Burmese military
during the construction of Unocal's gas pipeline
A
September 2000 decision in Federal District Court established
that UNOCAL"knew or should have known that the
Burmese military did commit, was committing and would
continue to commit" abuses for the benefit of UNOCAL's
gas pipeline project, but nevertheless found UNOCAL
could not be held liable because it did not control
the Burmese military's actions. The 9th Circuit overruled
the lower court, holding that the plaintiffs need only
demonstrate that Unocal knowingly assisted the military
in the perpetration of the abuses, and that plaintiffs
had met this burden, for the purposes of the motion
for summary judgment.
Daniel
Petrocelli, an attorney for Unocal, noted, "we're
in very novel legal terrain here . . . whether or not
a private American company can be held legally responsible
[for violations] committed by a foreign government."
Given
the stature of the San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals, the ruling is certain to influence
the views of other federal courts in similar cases.
The Ninth Circuit's jurisdiction covers much of the
western United States and only the US Supreme Court
can overrule its decision.
Doe
v. UNOCAL is just one of a number of pending cases where
local peoples seek to hold multinational corporations
liable for human rights and environmental abuses connected
to large energy projects. In February the US District
Court in Washington DC denied Royal Dutch Shells' motion
to dismiss in a case where the company was alleged to
have profited from abuses committed by the Nigerian
Army against the Ogoni people in the Niger-Delta. Similar
cases are pending against ChevronTexaco by indigenous
people in Ecuador for destroying their land with oil
leaks and toxic waste and against ExxonMobil for abuses
committed by Indonesian security forces in Aceh province.
For more information on these and other Alien Tort Claims
Act cases, visit http://www.earthrights.org/resources.shtml.
Private
Citizens Monitor California Coastal Development
California's
1,100-mile coast has a new watchdog: a retired tech
mogul with a helicopter and a digital camera who is
posting detailed photos on the Internet of every inch
of the oceanfront, from the redwood-studded cliffs of
the north to the rows of mansions crowding the south.
Ken
Adelman's two-week-old Internet site, the California
Coastal Records Project attracts thousands of viewers
daily and is being called a big technological advance
for environmental activism. "You can click and
see bulldozers on the beach," said Sierra Club
coastal director Mark Massara. "You can see funky
homemade seawalls and coastal resource degradation."
Since
March, Adelman and his wife, Gabrielle, a helicopter
pilot, have flown nearly all of the state's shoreline,
shooting high-resolution digital pictures every three
seconds -- more than 10,000 -- each capturing 500 feet
of oceanfront. The Web database eventually will total
about 13,000 images, an unprecedented record of the
coast, as it exists in 2002.
Massara
has been on the phone daily with California Coastal
Commission enforcement officers pointing out property
owners' violations of state law. Commission spokeswoman
Sarah Christie said staffers are using the Web site
and Coastal Commissioner Shirley S. Dettloff called
it a "wonderful tool" for decision-makers.
"Many times we get a project well described in
staff reports and then get grainy photos," Dettloff
said. "Now we can go online with our computers
and take a look at the project, not only in itself,
but in relationship to surrounding areas."
Paul
Hawken, a California-based tech entrepreneur and author
of business and ecology books, called Adelman's project
a breakthrough that would remake government planning
and land ownership regulations. "In 10 years, you
will be able to go to the Web as an individual and click
on a region, a place, a beach, an island, a forest,
a delta, a river, a trailhead, whatever, a city. Then
you'll be able to hit a button where you can go to animated
form and see the change over time," he said. This
article first appeared in The Washington Post.
(Jim Wasserman, California Costs Gets Intrepid Internet
Watchdog, WASHINGTON POST, November 4, 2002.) For
more information on the project, visit http://www.californiacoastline.org.
For
more news on citizen enforcement see these articles:
In
addition, please visit INECE's Public Access Forum at
http://www.inece.org/forumspublicaccess.html.
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