Legal exploration of the relationship between corporate social responsibility and environmental civil liability

Introduction: All people are responsible for environmental protection. This means that any person obliges to compensate for any damages which is called legal responsibility. In this paper, the relation between civil liability and social responsibility in the context of environmental responsibility is explored.
Material and methods: This research is conducted qualitatively by context analysis approach. National as well as international documents related to civil liability, corporate social responsibility and environmental responsibility of people and their interconnections were defined and evaluated by library studies. To explore the relationship between environmental civil liability and social responsibility, their parameters were analyzed separately, and their districts, objectives and principals were analyzed comparatively. To understand the relationship between environmental civil liability and social responsibility, first they were analyzed separately; then, in terms of territory, goals, customary practice and pillars, an analytical comparison was made between these two responsibilities and in each section, it is stated which of the logical relations is established between them.
Results and discussion: Results showed that there is a logical relation between civil liability and social responsibility in which there are some common features between them in term of considering social values. However, there are differences between these two responsibilities in which civil liability is merely considering present needs and values, while social responsibility considers present and future generations simultaneously.
Conclusion: There is a structural difference between civil liability and social responsibility in the context of environmental protection in which civil liability as a branch of legal responsibility is going to improve social life, while social responsibility is seeking to upgrade human-environment relation to protect the environment. In civil liability, the main objective is to compensate damages to people and assets, while social responsibility emphasizes to prevent environmental damage.