Focusing on contemporary debates in philosophy and legal theory, this ground-breaking book provides a compelling enquiry into the nature of human dignity. The author not only illustrates that dignity is a concept that can extend our understanding of our environmental impacts and duties, but also highlights how our reliance on and relatedness to the environment further extends and enhances our understanding of dignity itself.

Much has been written, discussed, advocated and litigated about human rights and the environment over the last two decades. This comprehensive volume of the Elgar Encyclopedia of Environmental Law offers fresh perspectives to the conversation by focusing on four subjects that shed new light on the subject of environmental human rights: the challenges of identifying the fundamental legal sources for the protection of human rights and the environment, the recognition of the indivisibility of human rights and environmental law, the centrality of the right to human dignity as the lodestar of human rights law, and the uniqueness of geographic particularities.

Abstract: The field of human rights engages rights that are thought to inhere to humanness, commonly categorised as either civil and political or social, economic and cultural. Civil and political rights include the right to vote, assemble and participate, as well as to free speech, religion and legal processes. Socioeconomic and cultural rights include dignity, education, health, food, water, sick leave, family leave, and employment, to name a few. A healthy environment occupies the liminality between. But until fairly recently, the human rights oeuvre largely avoided the question as to whether humans are entitled to a healthy environment. 'Global Enviromental Constitutionalism' has changed that. It explores the constitutional engagement, incorporation, adjudication and implementation of environmental rights, duties, responsibilities, procedures, policies and other measures that promote the twin aims of environmental protection and a right to a healthy environment. The constitutions of at least 84 countries now expressly recognise something akin to a right to a healthy environment. Courts in several additional countries have inferred a right to a healthy environment from other established rights, largely to life, dignity or health.Global environmental constitutionalism involves much more than whether to recognise a right to a healthy environment. Scores of countries have also amended or adopted constitutions to grant rights to information, participation, justice, water, sustainable development and a safe climate; to recognise rights of current and future generations, pndigenous peoples, and of nature; to impose (sometimes reciprocal) duties to protect the environment and the climate and engage in environmental assessment; and to promote myriad environmental policies, including sustainability. Environmental constitutionalism shows growth in the areas of climate litigation, rights of nature, procedural rights, application of human dignity under law, water law and sustainability.The task at hand is to explain how a human right to a healthy environment emerged and, ultimately, encouraged and converged with global environmental constitutionalism, and, to explore the extent to which environmental rights are being implemented and are improving environmental and human health outcomes.

The history of human rights suggests that individuals should be empowered in their natural, political, political, social and economic vulnerabilities. States within the international arena hold each other responsible for doing just that and support or interfere where necessary. States are to protect these essential human vulnerabilities, even when this is not a matter of self-interest. This function of human rights is recognized in contexts of intervention, genocide, humanitarian aid and development. This book develops the idea of environmental obligations as long-term responsibilities in the context of human rights. It proposes that human rights require recognition that, in the face of unsustainable conduct, future human persons are exposed and vulnerable. It explores the obstacles for long-term responsibilities that human rights law provides at the level of international and national law and challenges the question of whether lifestyle restrictions are enforceable in view of liberties and levels of wellbeing typically seen as protected by human rights. The book will be of interest to postgraduates studying Human Rights, Sustainability, Law and Philosophy.

This book explores the philosophical, theoretical and legal bases that underpin the linkage between human rights and the environment. Such linkage, grounded in reality, is an innovative way of addressing environmental issues through the lens of a well-established international human rights system. The book argues that a new set of environmental rights is gradually forging its way into international law and suggests a re-configuration of the human rights system in the context of sustainable development and the notion of solidarity rights. In doing so, two sets of concepts are considered: first, the possibility of a rapprochement between environmental ethics and the human rights doctrine and, second, the theoretical and practical links among the concepts of development, democracy, environment and sustainable development.

Human Rights and Environmental Sustainability challenges the assumed harmony between human rights norms and the demands of environmental sustainability, by addressing conceptual, normative, and political questions surrounding the interaction between the two. What is gained and lost by environmental theorists and activists adopting the language and institutions of human rights? Is there coherence or tension between the values of human rights and environmental sustainability? Is the idea of environmental human rights plausible, and defensible? Whereas previous studies have considered the interface between human rights and environmental sustainability on an empirical level, this pioneering book engages the theoretical and philosophical issues at stake. Given the significant environmental challenges we face, and the dominance of human rights as a normative framework, these concerns demand our attention. This timely work will appeal to scholars in the fields of environmental politics, philosophy, human rights theory and global or international ethics, as well as postgraduate students in environmental politics, and philosophy. Postgraduate students in human rights - particularly human rights theory - global or international ethics, and scholars working in environmental law or human rights law will also find this book invaluable.

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.

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. By looking at how environmental values have been systematically excluded from the human rights discourse, the book claims that human rights politics and law have been constructed on double standards to accommodate the destructive forces of capitalism.

Environmental factors impact on the enjoyment of human rights in a number of ways. However, the exact nature of the relationship between the environment and human rights in international human rights law remains unsettled, most notably in relation to the concept of a human right to a good environment. While the idea of a substantive right to an environment of a particular quality has received considerable support, it has yet to be adopted in any international legal instrument and remains the subject of much debate. This thesis interrogates the concept of a right to a good environment from a variety of perspectives to provide a comprehensive analysis of its suitability for inclusion in international human rights law. Given that climate change represents the biggest environmental challenge to have faced the international community, the thesis considers whether the right to a good environment is capable of providing new approaches for addressing the human rights implications of climate change. This thesis analyses the theoretical, legal, practical and political implications of the right to a good environment. It considers the theoretical foundations of human rights to assess whether the right is justifiable. It is concluded that a 'good environment' cannot be linked to human dignity, autonomy or interests without relying on rights which are already protected under existing law, such as the rights to health, food and water. It concludes that, without an independent justification, legal recognition of the right would risk undermining the existing human rights framework. The thesis also considers existing human rights approaches to environmental protection and to climate change in particular to determine whether a new right offers any significant practical benefits which might otherwise justify its recognition. The transnational, cumulative and ongoing impacts of climate change create significant challenges for enforcing human rights and it is argued that these effects would be even more problematic in relation to the right to a good environment. Because international legal recognition of new human rights depends on having the support of States, the thesis considers the current attitudes of States towards environmental human rights and human rights approaches to climate change. States are currently reluctant to acknowledge that they owe human rights obligations with respect to climate change and it is argued that they would be particularly unwilling to accept obligations under a new right to a good environment. Without the support of States, there is little likelihood that the right to a good environment would be adopted into international human rights law. The thesis concludes that continued proposals to recognise the right to a good environment in international law should be abandoned. The various theoretical, legal, practical and political considerations examined in the thesis indicate that it is not possible to settle on a definition of the right which would be both practically useful and independently justifiable. Further attention should instead be directed to clarifying the application of existing human rights law to environmental degradation, including the impacts of climate change.

Despite the global endorsement of the Sustainable Development Goals, environmental justice struggles are growing all over the world. These struggles are not isolated injustices, but symptoms of interlocking forms of oppression that privilege the few while inflicting misery on the many and threatening ecological collapse. This handbook offers critical perspectives on the multi-dimensional, intersectional nature of environmental injustice and the cross-cutting forms of oppression that unite and divide these struggles, including gender, race, poverty, and indigeneity. The work sheds new light on the often-neglected social dimension of sustainability and its relationship to human rights and environmental justice. Using a variety of legal frameworks and case studies from around the world, this volume illustrates the importance of overcoming the fragmentation of these legal frameworks and social movements in order to develop holistic solutions that promote justice and protect the planet's ecosystems at a time of intensifying economic and ecological crisis.