Reconstructing Corporate Deforestation Liability In The Climate Crisis

Abstract

Deforestation damages ecosystems while releasing stored carbon and reducing future carbon sequestration, creating interconnected harms that challenge conventional environmental liability. The central legal problem is how to connect these consequences to specific corporate actors across direct operations and value chains without treating commercial association as sufficient grounds for liability. This study develops a doctrinal framework that integrates harm characterisation, corporate attribution, and proportionate remedies. It employs qualitative doctrinal analysis of legislation, judgments, advisory opinions, legal scholarship, and published scientific studies, combining conceptual, statutory, and case-law approaches with selective comparison across jurisdictions. The analysis identifies a persistent gap between preventive responsibilities and enforceable liability, compounded by fragmented legal categories, corporate relationships, and evidentiary requirements. It conceptualises forest disturbance as potentially generating dual ecological and climate harm while distinguishing scientific attribution from legal responsibility. The proposed corporate deforestation climate liability framework differentiates direct conduct, involvement through controlled entities, and value-chain relationships, linking each pathway to applicable obligations, causal proof, and attributed consequences. Its remedial approach connects ecological recovery, restoration of carbon-regulating functions, and proven residual harm, with safeguards against double counting and unsupported claims of recovery. The study concludes that integrating harm assessment and remedial design provides a coherent basis for reconstructing liability while preserving jurisdiction-specific legal requirements.