Cooperative Assessment of Natural Resource Injuries: Why Can It Work?
ABSTRACT Around the world, typically, when a spill situation occurs, the main objective of the responsible party (RP) is to reduce the costs of the response as much as possible. At the other end, governments will want to protect the environment in the most efficient manner. These two positions will often clash resulting in stalled interventions to the disadvantage of both parties. Unfortunately, this situation is common and can lead to prosecution of the ship by governmental authorities. Examples of this behavior were recently observed in some Canadian cases where response was prolonged unnecessarily because of a lack of collaboration from RP. This paper will explore the benefits associated with a collaborative approach for the assessment of environmental damages between RP and governments. The authors will use a recent Canadian spill where such an approach was used to illustrate with concrete examples the benefits that where obtained.