Environmental liability aims at making the agent causing the environmental damage (the
polluter) pay for repairing the damage that they have caused. Environmental regulations and
accounting standards with regard to liability differ from nation to nation. Often, only dangerous
and potentially dangerous activities which cause direct damage to persons (personal injury),
goods (property damage) and sometimes biodiversity or contaminated sites are captured
under the heading of strict liability. Strict liability means that there is no need to establish a
fault on the part of the actor, but merely the fact that an action (or the omission thereof) has
actually caused the damage. The EU Commission’s white paper on environmental liability4
aims to include damage to protected natural resources by non-dangerous fault based activities
also.