Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: Melting ice, rising sea levels, and changing weather patterns attributable to climate change increasingly affect daily life for millions, and perhaps billions, of people. When the environment suffers, people suffer. Climate change increasingly interferes with the realization of fundamental, internationally recognized human rights — including the right to life, to health, to culture, to food, to self-determination, to property, and to development. The poorest and most vulnerable will suffer first, and perhaps most, but ultimately the crisis will reach all of us.Part 1 of this paper describes why human rights are increasingly being invoked in the context of environmental decision-making. Part 2 offers a brief introduction to the limitations of domestic and international environmental law that drive interest in using human rights to address environmental challenges. Part 3 surveys existing human rights that have been pressed into service for environmental ends, and highlights the strengths and weaknesses of using existing human rights norms to advance environmental goals. Part 4 describes the emerging norms coalescing around the human right to a healthy environment. This section re-analyzes existing human rights cases through an environmental rights lens to highlight what environmental rights might add to the existing body of human rights law and jurisprudence. Part 5 considers whether invoking human rights extends state ability to regulate the environmental conduct of non-state actors like transnational corporations. Finally, Part 6 returns to the introduction — putting human rights jurisprudence in the context of the scope and scale of the environmental problems we face.
Author: Rebecca M. Bratspies
Institutions: City University of New York, CUNY School of Law
Language: English
Topic: Environmental law and policy
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W225721569