The Human Right To A Healthy Environment

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

Canada has abundant natural wealth, beautiful landscapes, vast forests, and thousands of rivers and lakes. The land defines Canadians as a people, yet the country has one of the industrialized world's worst environmental records. Building on his previous book, The Environmental Rights Revolution (2012), David R. Boyd describes how recognizing the constitutional right to a healthy environment could have a transformative impact by empowering citizens, holding governments and industry accountable, and improving Canada's green record. This important and provocative book provides a road map to protect human health, the well-being of the planet, and the interests of future generations.

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.

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 shows why a fundamental right to an adequate environment ought to be provided in the constitution of any modern democratic state. It explains why the right to an environment adequate for one's health and well-being is a genuine human right and why it ought to be constitutionalised.

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.

A practical human rights approach strengthens environmental protection without requiring radical departures from established protection regimes and legal principles.

This book brings together original and novel perspectives on major developments in human rights law and the environment in Africa. Focusing on African Union law, the book explores the core concepts and principles, theory and practice, accountability mechanisms and key issues challenging human rights law in the era of global environmental change. It, thus, extend the frontier of understanding in this fundamental area by building on existing scholarship on African human rights law and the protection of the environment, divulging concerns on redressing environmental and human rights protection issues in the context of economic growth and sustainable development. It further offers unique insight into the development, domestication and implementation challenges relating to human rights law and environmental governance in Africa. This long overdue interdisciplinary exploration of human rights law and the environment from an African perspective will be an indispensable reference point for academics, policymakers, practitioners and advocates of international human rights and environmental law in particular and international law, environmental politics and philosophy, and African studies in general. It is clear that there is much to do, study and share on this timely subject in the African context.