s, decrees, regulations, and other instruments that have been promulgated on the various matters within the scope of the convention, as well as official reports that show the results of the application of the Convention, and also an annual statistical report of penalties imposed for infringement of the Convention. The latter communications are to be circulated to all parties.57
The most recent worldwide international convention related to the environment was the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, of 22 March 1989,58 which shows some progress when compared to the 1973 London Convention,59 but of course, between the two instruments quite a few others have organized reporting systems. According to the Basel Convention, the Parties shall inform each other through the Secretariat - which is at this moment UNEP - of transboundary movements of hazardous wastes in which they were involved, on the measures adopted by them in the implementation of the Convention, as well as of accidents occurring during the transboundary movement and disposal of hazardous wastes and on the measures undertaken to deal with them.60 The Secretariat then prepares reports based upon such information, as well as upon, as appropriate, information provided by relevant intergovernmental and non-governmental entities.61 It may be presumed that such reports are to be submitted to the conference of parties, since this body created by the Convention "shall keep under continuous review and evaluation the effective implementation of this Convention."62 As this had been stressed, the role recognized to non-governmental entities, such as associations, for ensuring the implementation of a treaty related to environmental protection is an important step forward.
Further developments in this direction are to be envisaged: in fact, they are needed more and more. Some proposals have been made tending to the establishment of a real international jurisdiction in this field.63 At a first stage, surveillance of the implementation of state obligations should be expanded to all the major treaties and ensured by independent international expert bodies. They should agree to consider communications submitted by non-governmental entities. Final reports on the findings of such bodies should be publicized and submitted to competent UN or other such organs, without excluding the possibility of submitting the case to an international jurisdiction.64
An overview of the international practice concerning the place and role of international liability in the field of environmental protection also shows the impact of global change on our traditional conceptions. The liability of states in international law is generally understood as the consequence of damage caused by a state to another and generates the obligation to repair such damage, generally by adequate compensation. The international practice shows that, in spite of a mass of writings, this pattern hardly works when environmental prejudice is at stake. Several reasons can explain this: the causal link between the supposed harmful activity and the damage may be difficult to establish, the identification of the source in the legal sense of the term may be difficult if not impossible to ascertain, and the evaluation of the damage suffered by the environment raises very hard problems.65 In order to escape these obstacles, states, which never have agreed to draft precise rules on international liability in environmental matters, prefer to transfer the problem of compensation for such damages from the inter-state to the inter-individual level, by providing for procedures that allow the victim of the damage to be compensated by suing the source directly, who is generally a private person.66 The best description of the present situation is given in Article 235 of the Law of the Sea Convention,67 if its meaning is expanded to other aspects of the environment: "States shall ensure that recourse is available in accordance with their legal systems for prompt and adequate compensati