VALDECO

This project involves joint research by a group of environmentalists, economists and legal specialists with in-depth experience of oil spills, in order to establish a proposed action plan for the national and local authorities in order to seek better compensation for environmental damages following an oil spill.

This is a complex task: there is no global approach, each aspect affected has its own specificities and must be addressed independently, involving constant interaction between the views of ecologists (how can it be quantified?), economists (how much is it worth?) and legal experts (on what basis?). The French national instruction and Polmar plans establish response operation practices. They do not cover compensation but simply give the ministry in charge of the environment the responsibility of coordinating impact assessment work.