Environmental Human Rights

The right to a healthy environment has been the subject of extensive philosophical debates that revolve around the question: Should rights to clean air, water, and soil be entrenched in law? David Boyd answers this by moving beyond theoretical debates to measure the practical effects of enshrining the right in constitutions. His pioneering analysis of 193 constitutions and the laws and court decisions of more than 100 nations in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa reveals a positive correlation between constitutional protection and stronger environmental laws, smaller ecological footprints, superior environmental performance, and improved quality of life.

This title was first published in 2003. Environmental Human Rights redefines the political, ethical and legal relationships between the environment and human rights to claim the human rights to an environment free from toxic pollution and to natural resources. Through a focus on the operational dynamics of social power, this compelling book details how global capitalism subjugates concerns of human security and environmental protection to the values of allocative efficiency and economic growth. The capacity of social power to construct ethical norms and to determine the efficacy of law is examined to explain how ethical and legal concepts have been selectively applied to accommodate existing patterns of production, consumption and exchange that cause environmental degradation and human rights violations. By looking at how environmental values have been systematically excluded from the human rights discourse, the book claims that human rights politics and law has been constructed on double standards to accommodate the destructive forces of capitalism.

This book examines the current status of environmental human rights at the international, regional, and national levels and provides a critical analysis of possible future developments in this area, particularly in the context of a changing climate. It examines various conceptualisations of environmental human rights, including procedural rights relating to the environment, constitutional environmental rights, the environmental dimensions of existing human rights such as the rights to water, health, food, housing and life, and the notion of a stand-alone human right to a healthy environment. The book addresses the topic from a variety of perspectives, drawing on underlying theories of human rights as well as a range of legal, political, and pragmatic considerations. It examines the scope of current human rights, particularly those enshrined in international and regional human rights law, to explore their application and enforceability in relation to environmental problems, identifying potential barriers to more effective implementation. It also analyses the rationale for constitutional recognition of environmental rights and considers the impact that this area of law has had, both in terms of achieving stronger environmental protection and environmental justice, as well as in influencing the development of human rights law more generally. The book identifies climate change as the key environmental challenge facing the global community, as well as a major cause of negative human rights impacts. It examines the contribution that environmental human rights might make to rights-based approaches to climate change.

The nature of environmental human rights and their relation to larger rights theories has been a frequent topic of discussion in law, environmental ethics and political theory. However, the subject of environmental human rights has not been fully established among other human rights concerns within political philosophy and theory. In examining environmental rights from a political theory perspective, this book explores an aspect of environmental human rights that has received less attention within the literature. In linking the constraints of political reality with a focus on the theoretical underpinnings of how we think about politics, this book explores how environmental human rights must respond to the key questions of politics, such as the state and sovereignty, equality, recognition and representation, and examines how the competing understandings about these rights are also related to political ideologies. Drawing together contributions from a range of key thinkers in the field, this is a valuable resource for students and scholars of human rights, environmental ethics, and international environmental law and politics more generally.

The book examines the genesis and development of environmental rights (or the Right to Environment) in international law and discusses their philosophical, theoretical and legal underpinnings in the context of sustainable development and the notion of solidarity rights.

With unique scholarly analysis and practical discussion, this book provides a comprehensive introduction to the relationship between environmental protection and human rights being formalized into law in many legal systems. This book instructs on environmental techniques and procedures that assist in the protection of human rights. The text provides cogent guidance on a growing international jurisprudence on the promotion and protection of human rights in relation to the environment that has been developed by international and regional human rights bodies and tribunals. It explores a rich body of case law that continues to develop within states on the environmental dimension of the rights to life, to health, and to public participation and access to information. Five compelling contemporary case studies are included that implicate human rights and the environment, ranging from large dam projects to the creation of a new human right to a clean environment.

A high quality environment is coming to be regarded as a necessary prerequisite for the enjoyment of some of the most fundamental human rights, including the rights to life and health. However, the precise recognition of a 'right to environment' has not yet been settled. The essays collected here address this and related questions from different perspectives.

A comprehensive and systematic guide to environmental rights and their relationship with standards of protection globally, nationally and locally.