AN OVERVIEW OF STRICT LIABILITY OFFENCES AND CIVIL PENALTIES IN THE UK’S ENVIRONMENTAL LAW

The UK has incorporated the strict liability principle in dealing with the environmental offence in its legislations. However, the principle application has some detrimental impacts. This article aims to discuss strict liability crimes in the UK’s environmental legislations and civil penalties in the UK, the detrimental effects of applying its principle and the reasons for supplementing criminal penalties for environmental offences with civil penalties. This will be done through the adoption of a doctrinal legal research method. The incorporation of strict liability principle in the UK’s legislations can be found in the Environmental Protection Act 1990, the Water Resources Act 1991, Part 2A of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2010 (SI 2010 No. 675). The detrimental effects of the principle application are the ignorance of mens rea element, unfair trial, ineffective environmental damage prevention, and contradictory to release right. The reasons for applying civil penalties of criminal law violation in regard with violating environmental law are this punishment is possible to be imposed on companies, it strengthens another kind of non-criminal sentence sanction, it is a peaceful solution, a polluter may manage by himself to repair the damage, it has no stigma on the polluter and it has wider law enforcement form. There is a dearth of literature looking at the latest UK’s legislation incorporating strict liability principle application. This article will fill this literature gap.

Problems of Cost Evaluation of Damage to Environmental Objects

The article discusses the key issues of cost evaluation of damage to the environment. This is a problem of legislative regulation arising from the lack of clear criteria of harm materiality to environmental objects; the problem of regulation of the content of ecotoxicants in various environments; the problem of methodological support. The difficulties of determining the “initial” state of the violated environmental objects, as well as fundamental differences in approaches to the calculation of economic damage to environmental objects are also analysed. It is shown that a possible resolution for these issues is environmental forensics involving the application of specialized knowledge of natural sciences, ecology in particular, to specify the consequences of an environmental offence, causal relationship and economic damage to the environmental objects. Forensic environmental experts have integrated knowledge of natural sciences and law.

Corporate boards and environmental offence conviction: evidence from the United Kingdom

Purpose This paper aims to report the results of an investigation into the relationship between corporate boards and the likelihood of a firm being convicted of an environmental offence in the United Kingdom (UK). Design/methodology/approach The study uses binary logistics regression analysis to model the relationship between corporate boards and the likelihood of a firm being convicted of an environmental offence in the UK, controlling for firm size, financial leverage and profitability. Findings The results suggest that the likelihood of a firm being convicted of an environmental offence increases with board size but decreases with the presence of a woman on the board. No support is found for the authors’ hypotheses about the proportion of outside directors and the presence of a lawyer on the board. Marginal effects’ results also show that adding one member to the board increases the chance of a firm being convicted for an environmental offence by 4.2 per cent, while having a woman on the board decreases the likelihood of a firm being convicted of an environmental offence by 31.8 per cent. Research limitations/implications The sample size of 55 firms is small which could affect the generalisability of the study. Originality/value The study uses proprietary data obtained from the UK Environmental Agency to provide evidence for the first time how corporate boards affect the chances of a listed firm being convicted of an environmental offence in the UK.