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A Peruvian farmer lost his case against a German energy company, but the court accepted the principle behind it. The International Court of Justice has since defined what states owe. Neither has yet answered the question on which compensation depends.
The 2025 finding travelled the world as a single vivid image. The study behind it is more interesting, more uncertain and more useful than the image suggests.
In 1991, the oil wells of Kuwait burned for most of a year and their smoke and oil crossed into neighbouring states. It remains the only time the world made a state pay for the environmental damage of a war. Thirty-five years later, oil is burning again in the same region.
When the author of a harm cannot be brought to court, one address remains: the duty of the state to protect.
