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

More than 50 years ago, Franklin Kury drafted and championed an Environmental Rights Amendment to the Pennsylvania Constitution, which was enacted on Earth Day 1970 and ratified by Pennsylvania's voters a year later. In the half century since then, climate change has become the overriding threat to the environment of the planet. In this book, Franklin Kury expands upon the story of Article I, Section 27, to demonstrate how its principles can be the basis for addressing climate change in the rest of the world. The story concludes with a call for the federal government's leadership to seek a national environmental rights amendment to the U.S. Constitution and a treaty to expand its reach to the international community.

2017 INDIE BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD FINALIST "A rallying cry . . . Everyone who is concerned about the welfare of all species, including human beings. Please read this important book." --Richard Louv, chairman emeritus of the Children & Nature Network and author of LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS and THE NATURE PRINCIPLE The Constitutional Change We Need to Protect Our Priceless Natural Resources For decades, activists have relied on federal and state legislation to fight for a cleaner environment. And for decades, they've been fighting a losing battle. The sad truth is, our laws are designed to accommodate pollution rather than prevent it. It's no wonder people feel powerless when it comes to preserving the quality of their water, air, public parks, and special natural spaces. But there is a solution, argues veteran environmentalist Maya K. van Rossum: bypass the laws and turn to the ultimate authority--our state and federal constitutions. In 2013, van Rossum and her team won a watershed legal victory that not only protected Pennsylvania communities from ruthless frackers but affirmed the constitutional right of people in the state to a clean and healthy environment. Following this victory, van Rossum inaugurated the Green Amendment movement, dedicated to empowering every American community to mobilize for constitutional change. Now, with The Green Amendment, van Rossum lays out an inspiring new agenda for environmental advocacy, one that will finally empower people, level the playing field, and provide real hope for communities everywhere. Readers will discover how legislative environmentalism has failed communities across America, the transformational difference environmental constitutionalism can make, the economic imperative of environmental constitutionalism, and how to take action in their communities. We all have the right to pure water, clean air, and a healthy environment. It's time to claim that right--for our own sake and that of future generations.

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.

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.

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

Everyone depends on clean air to breathe, safe water to drink and healthy soil for growing food. But what if your drinking water is dangerous, your air is polluted and your soil is toxic? What can you do about that? Do you have the right to demand change? Fresh Air, Clean Water: Defending Our Right to a Healthy Environment explores the connections between our environment and our health, and why the right to live in a healthy environment should be protected as a human right. The book features profiles of kids around the world who are taking action and important environmental rights court cases. Hear the powerful stories of those fighting for change. The epub edition of this title is fully accessible.

This book provides a broad understanding of whether law plays a role in influencing patterns of sustainable consumption and, if so, how. Bringing together legal scholars from the Global South and the Global North, it examines these questions in the context of national, transnational and international law, within single and plural legal systems, and across a range of sector-specific issue areas. The chapters identify how traditional legal disciplines (e.g. constitutional law, consumer law, public procurement, international public law), sector-related regulation (e.g. energy, water, waste), and legal rules in specific areas (e.g. eco-labelling and packing) engage with the concept of sustainable consumption. A number of the contributions describe this relationship by isolating a national legal system, while others approach it from the vantage point of legal pluralism, exploring the conflicts and convergences of rules between multiple international treaties (or guidelines) and those between the rules of international and transnational law (or both) vis-à-vis national legal systems. While sustainable consumption is recognised as an important field of interdisciplinary research linking virtually all social science disciplines, legal scholarship, in contrast, has neglected the importance of the field of sustainable consumption to the law. This book fills the gap.

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 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.