The Intensity of litigable “Environmental damage” in French Law and the Challenges of “Environmental pollution” in the Iranian Legal System

Damage to elements or functions of the ecosystem or to collective use of human beings from the environment, is considered as environmental damage in the  French legal system. In such a legal system, the intensity of damage should be significant to be litigable. There is a conflict in respect to the meaning of this damage and also a conflict concerning this restriction in the Code with the generality of the principle that the environmental damage must be compensated. Therefore, the matter has been referred to the constitutional Council. In our domestic law, although studies on environmental damage have been conducted, but most legislative norms concentrate on the concept and specific cases of “pollution” and our law has leaned towards environmental pollution law instead of compensation for environmental damage law and facilitation of litigation and proof. Moreover, in addition to such internal barriers to environmental compensation such as uncertainty, ambiguity, and time-consuming consequences of destructive or polluting actions, external barriers such as differences in the nature of liability in public and private law, difficulty in establishing causal link and inconsistency of concept of pollution with some specific cases of damages must also be added.