Abstract
Images of oil-covered seabirds or radioactive fallout from nuclear disasters easily evoke concerns over the risks to personal integrity and environmental degradation. The energy-extraction industry, like others, is profit-driven – a competitive enterprise, with little regard for the social impact of its activities beyond corporate social responsibility (CSR) rhetoric. CSR is neither a precautionary measure nor a remedial framework. Outsider stakeholder influence from government is limited and CSR is written on companies’ terms. What emerges is a distortion between companies’ responsibility and accountability for breaches. We propose a hybrid form of accountability that incorporates public international law to ensure the state, as a guardian of society, plays a more definitive role. This will require more binding obligations on states and companies beyond the current soft-law principles, to curtail jurisdictional constraints and forum shopping of large corporations, through an international court of reparations to guarantee effective remedies for victims.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 312-336 |
Number of pages | 25 |
Journal | International Journal of Law in Context |
Volume | 12 |
Issue number | 3 |
Early online date | 21 Jul 2016 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Sept 2016 |