Environmental liability and ecological damage

Classic tort law compensates harm suffered by a person. A polluted river or a destroyed species belongs to no one, and the damage long went without anyone liable to repair it. Two regimes filled this gap in France. The first stems from Directive 2004/35/EC, transposed by the law of 1 August 2008 into articles L. 160-1 et seq. of the Environmental Code: it is an administrative regime in which the prefect requires the operator of a hazardous activity to prevent or remedy in kind serious damage to soil, water and protected species, without any victim having to sue. The second is case law turned statute: after the Court of Cassation recognized pure ecological damage in the Erika case in 2012, the law of 8 August 2016 wrote it into articles 1246 et seq. of the Civil Code, favoring remedy in kind and opening the action to the state, local authorities and approved associations. For insurance, these regimes create an exposure that general liability does not cover, because it targets third-party damage. They require dedicated cover, and they raise a hard pricing question: the cost of ecological restoration is poorly documented and can far exceed the economic value of the affected environment.