Rights of Nature as Part of Human Rights Protection? On the Potential of Anthropocentric Human Rights Protection

Abstract

In recent years, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has provided important food for thought for human rights scholars working to fight biodiversity loss, species extinction, climate change and the degradation of the world’s ecosystems. The Court introduced what can be called an ‘integrative approach’ to address these challenges by including non-human subjects – natural entities – in the logic and practice of international human rights law. This article takes this integrative approach as an impulse to explore the question of whether and how the protection of natural entities can be achieved in an anthropocentric human rights system such as the European system.

Keywords: Rights of Nature, European Court of Human Rights, Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Anthropocentric human rights protection, Climate change