Collective redress in transnational environmental damages litigation

Abstract

Environmental disasters occurred over the last century and the harmful effects that the industrial activity and our lifestyle have on the environment and, therefore, on our quality of life have broght to light the special and complex nature of environmental damages. These damages pose several challenges to Law in general and to Private international law in particular, as the presence of a foreign element is increasingly common in these cases. In this scenario, collective redress mechanisms appear as a useful tool to access efective justice for injured people. However, its deficient and incipient regulation, especially as regards environmental matters, makes its use difficult or impossible which results in an insufficient or inexistent repair of the damages, both the individual and the social ones. These obstacles will be analyzed in this work in order to make some proposals with the aim of improving both the Spanish and the European regulation of collective redress mechanisms.