Ecological damage (pure environmental harm)
Non-negligible harm to the elements or functions of ecosystems or to the collective benefits derived from the environment, compensable under French law independently of any harm to a person or property.
Liability law traditionally recognized only harm suffered by persons: a fisher deprived of income, a hotel owner whose beach is fouled. The destruction of seabirds or a seagrass bed, which belong to no one, went uncompensated. Ecological damage fills that gap: any person with standing and interest, the State, local authorities, environmental associations, may seek compensation from the liable party. Remediation is primarily in kind, through measures to restore the environment; failing that, damages are allocated to repairing the environment. Costs incurred to prevent or limit the harm are also recoverable. For environmental liability insurers, the notion extends the scope of claims beyond third-party damage, and its valuation methods, restoration cost or habitat equivalency, remain unsettled, which makes it hard to quantify.
The criminal chamber of the Court of Cassation recognized ecological damage on September 25, 2012 in the Erika case, upholding Total's conviction; the act of August 8, 2016 on the recovery of biodiversity wrote it into Articles 1246 to 1252 of the Civil Code.
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