Civil Responsibility and the Reparation of Environmental Damage: Limits and Guardianship Possibilities of Individual Rights

Abstract

No doubts exist on the right that the Law must be responsible for the natural environment since the latter’s preservation and equilibrium of the ecosystem are essential for the quality of human life and for the planet’s subsistence or, at least, for human subsistence, guaranteeing natural conditions indispensable for human survival. Civil responsibility is thus accountable for the protection of the environment, or in practical terms, that the polluter must be also the payer. The general theory of environmental damage produced by activities which are unfriendly to the environment states that civil responsibility for damage is objectively aggravated. This fact is based on the integral risk theory, or rather, the polluter is also accountable for all activities placed for the prevention and repairing of environmental damages. Civil responsibility is thus attributed to halt the degradation of the environment, assuring life as the most important thing from which several personal rights emanate.