Learning from Constitutional Environmental Rights
Daly E, May JR. Learning from Constitutional Environmental Rights. In: Knox JH, Pejan R, eds. The Human Right to a Healthy Environment. Cambridge University Press; 2018:42-58.
Posted: 15 Nov 2024 Last revised: 11 Dec 2024
Date Written: January 01, 2018
Abstract
This chapter examines how national environmental constitutionalism can contribute to the development of an international human right to a healthful environment. We suggest that the lessons learned in forty years of domestic environmental constitutionalism can inspire and inform considerations concerning an international environmental right's meaning, scope, and enforceability. More than one-half of the countries in the world have incorporated environmental rights constitutionally, leading to thoughtful consideration about what environmental rights mean and how to enhance their effectiveness. In addition to these substantive environmental rights, constitutions also guarantee procedural requirements, establish reciprocal duties of public and private actors to protect the environment, and announce policy objectives and fundamental values relating to environmental protection. Given the existing environmental human rights obligations on states, the question is whether an international human right to a healthful environment is warranted. We believe that such a right has the potential to advance environmental protection for two principal reasons. First, as a legal matter, a human right to a healthy environment would impose supra-national obligations on states to observe or protect rights that otherwise may not be reflected in domestic law or in regional instruments.' As a normative matter, establishing such a right would confirm the interdependence and the indivisibility of human and environmental rights.
Keywords: Environmental Rights, Human Rights, Constitutionalism
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation