Human Rights And The Environment

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.

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.

Es un libro de consulta valiosa que explora el territorio desconocido que hay entre la legislación ambiental y de los derechos humanos. Más que un tratado teórico, se argumenta que el activismo de los derechos humanos representa una oportunidad importante para hacer frente a las consecuencias humanas de la degradación del medio ambiente y puede servir como un catalizador de ideas y acciones inspiradoras en el mundo real -- Contraportada.

This book provides a solid understanding of both human rights and environmental issues. Combining the authors' specialisms in law and politics, this is a truly inter-disciplinary resource that will be essential for students of human rights, environmental studies, international law, international relations, politics and philosophy.

This book considers and clarifies many different facets of the international human right to a healthy environment.

The field of human rights and the environment has grown phenomenally during the last few years and this textbook will be one of the first to encourage students to think critically about how many environmental issues lead to a violation of existing rights. Taking a socio-legal approach, this book will provide a good understanding of both human rights and environmental issues, as well as the limitations of each regime, and will explore the ways in which human rights law and institutions can be used to obtain relief for the victims of environmental degradation or of adverse effects of environmental policies. In addition, it will place an emphasis on climate change and climate policies to highlight the pros and cons of using a human rights framework and to underscore its importance in the context of climate change. As well as identifying emerging issues and areas for further research, each chapter will be rich in pedagogical features, including web links to further research and discussion questions for beyond the classroom. Combining their specialisms in law and politics, Atapattu and Schapper have developed a truly inter-disciplinary resource that will be essential for students of human rights, environmental studies, international law, international relations, politics, and philosophy.

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.

Despite the clear link between climate change and human rights with the potential for virtually all protected rights to be undermined as a result of climate change, its catastrophic impact on human beings was not really understood as a human rights issue until recently. This book examines the link between climate change and human rights in a comprehensive manner. It looks at human rights approaches to climate change, including the jurisprudential bases for human rights and the environment, the theoretical framework governing human rights and the environment, and the different approaches to this including benchmarks. In addition to a discussion of human rights implications of international environmental law principles in the climate change regime, the book explores how the human rights framework can be used in relation to mitigation, adaption, and adjudication. Other chapters examine how vulnerable groups –women, indigenous peoples and climate "refugees" – would be disproportionately affected by climate change. The book then goes on to discuss a new category of people created by climate change, those who will be rendered stateless as a result of states disappearing and displaced by climate change, and whether human rights law can adequately address these emerging issues.