lance 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 compensation or other relief in respect of damage caused by pollution of the marine environment by natural or juridical persons under their jurisdiction."68
As a matter of fact, international conventions provide for procedures ensuring at least partial compensation for the damages that seem to be the most considerable: those caused by nuclear accidents,69 those resulting from the pollution of the sea by hydrocarbons,70 and damages to the Antarctic environment by mineral resource activities.71
But the same article of the Law of the Sea Convention also opens a door for a larger conception of international liability. According to the first paragraph, "states are responsible for the fulfillment of their international obligations concerning the protection and preservation of the marine environment. They shall be liable in accordance with international law "72
This clause makes no distinction between the obligations resulting from a damage caused to another state and the consequences of the breach of a treaty obligation. The preamble of the 1989 Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Waste and Their Disposal reproduces this provision as a general principle, adding that, "in the case of a material breach of the provisions of the convention or any protocol thereto, the relevant international law of treaties shall apply."73
Most writers in international law are hypnotized by damage as the principal if not the exclusive condition for liability. However, as has been demonstrated, damage is extremely hard to establish in certain fields, while potential violations of the thousands of existing treaty provisions, which tend to protect the environment, become more and more a reality. One of the consequences of global change is the fantastic development of international regulations in different fields, and the main task of the international rule concerning liability seems to ensure their respect. In this regard it is irrelevant whether damage has occurred: a state that authorizes or tolerates the dumping of