Multinational Enterprises and Environmental Degradation--What Makes Multinational Enterprises Hard to be Held Accountable and Solutions

Abstract

How to pursue legal accountability of multinational enterprises damaging the environment outside their home countries is an urgent problem pending to be solved, especially when environmental issues caused by them are becoming the primary driver of global environmental degradation. To circumvent their accountability to pay for what they have done to the environment and people living there, parent companies usually justify their innocence through the idea of independent accountability their subsidiaries legally have. This article will focus on reasons and difficulties in making parent companies directly responsible for environmental degradation caused by their subsidiaries and finally put forward theoretical and practical solutions that can be taken by home countries and internationally to regulate MNEs so as to surmount the problem. Through these efforts, not only will it be easier for environmental victims to seek justice in the foreseeable future, but the global environmental degradation caused by MNEs will be substantially prevented.