ENVIRONMENTAL LAW, CLIMATE JUSTICE, AND THE CRIMINAL LIABILITY FOR ECOLOGICAL DESTRUCTION (ECOCIDE)
The Slaughter of Nature as the Price of Economic Profit (Ecocide) The most modern crisis area of administrative and criminal law, yet the most lethal and global in scale in terms of its devastation, is Environmental Law (Climate & Environmental Law). The actions of massive mining companies, thermal power plants, or chemical waste-producing industrial giants causing cyanide leaks, carbon emission disasters, and deforestation to reduce production costs (treatment and filtration expenses) constitute an “Ecocide” that cannot be glossed over with a mere administrative fine. The fact that administrative authorities often turn a blind eye to these destructions under the pretexts of “the country’s economic growth” and “employment,” or provide a legal cover with “EIA Positive” decisions, is the usurpation of the right to life of future generations from today.
Corporate Liability in Environmental Crimes and the Difficulty of the Causal Link The greatest judicial difficulty in environmental law is proving the “causal link” (causality) between a poisonous waste discharged into a river or a toxic gas released into the air, and the death of agricultural lands in that region or the cancer cases among the local population. Companies pursue a strategy of creating “scientific uncertainty” by claiming that these destructions stem from environmental, genetic, or other factors. The intervention of the law here is to refute these manipulative defenses of companies with precise microscopic data (ppm analyses) obtained from the toxicology, hydrogeology, and environmental engineering departments of universities, and to uncompromisingly operate the “Polluter Pays” and “Precautionary” principles within the courtrooms.
The Multidimensional Administrative and Criminal Law Struggle Waged on Behalf of Future Generations Preventing an environmental disaster or ensuring the price is paid for a destruction that has already occurred requires a radical legal practice standing against the state and corporations on behalf of nature:
- Obtaining stay of execution and annulment decisions in Administrative Courts against “EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) Positive” or “Mine Exploration/Operation Licenses” decisions issued contrary to law and science, before irreversible slaughters of nature commence.
- Initiating high criminal proceedings with demands for direct imprisonment against the board members of factories that poison nature and the public officials (bureaucrats) who neglect this supervision, within the scope of Articles 181 and 182 of the Turkish Penal Code (Crime of Intentional or Negligent Pollution of the Environment).
- Implementing the stages of collecting the pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages of farmers whose crops have dried up and local people whose health has deteriorated as a result of environmental disasters from the polluting institutions through massive compensation lawsuits within the framework of “Strict Liability” (Hazard Liability).
The client defended in environmental law is not merely the human of today, but nature itself, which has no voice, and the right to life of unborn children.
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