State Responsibility Of Trans-Boundary Environmental Damage

Environment is a combination of natural and social factors which have impacts on the existence and development of human beings. Nowadays, damage caused by serious environmental destruction has had influences on all aspects of human beings such as politics, economics and people's lives. In recent years in particular, with the rapid development of science and technology, environmental pollution has gone beyond the borders and the environmental crisis has shown a momentum of globalization with trans-boundary environmental damage as a typical representation. How to avoid trans-boundary environmental damage and how to minimize the losses of it is an important issue the international society has committed to studying in the past decades. As the main body of international law, the state plays an important role in the trans-boundary environmental damage accidents. The state is obligated to avoid the accidents, and moreover, the state has the responsibility to reduce the damage and make compensation after the accidents. The state responsibility system is the one of great importance in international laws. In trans-boundary environmental damage accidents, it is an important means to solve the trans-boundary problem for the states to shoulder the responsibility of international laws. But, at present, the state responsibility system is far to complete, many problems don't have unified conclusions and countries are not willing to take the responsibility for trans-boundary environmental damage. Based on the issue's theoretical research value and real meaning, keeping pace with the global situation and the development of international environmental laws, the paper conducts discussions for the issue of state responsibility on the following aspects:Firstly, the paper analyzes and expatiates on the definition of trans-boundary environmental damage and state responsibility system for trans-boundary environmental damage, that states take the responsibilities of international laws has become a compulsory way to solve the trans-boundary environmental damage because of the beyond-border-nature of it. Since the international society has disputes on whether countries should take responsibility for trans-boundary environmental damage, the compilation of the international law governing the issue is still not finished. The state responsibility for trans-boundary environmental damage is complementary and new to traditional state responsibilities. It differs from, but at same time, connects with the traditional state responsibilities. They have same essence that is they are the responsibilities a state should take for its violation of the obligation of international laws.Secondly, the nomological basis of trans-boundary environmental damage is a hot issue focused by international law circles. So far, no unified conclusion has been reached yet. The nomological basis of state responsibility for trans-boundary environmental damage should be the obligation standard of international environmental laws, because the essence of environmental problems is the result of that human beings'activities and their impacts have surpassed the limit of...