New Frontiers in Environmental Constitutionalism
United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment) May 2017
332 Pages Posted: 17 Dec 2024 Last revised: 14 Dec 2024
Date Written: May 18, 2017
Abstract
Environmental constitutionalism examines the development, implementation and effectiveness of incorporating environmental rights, procedures, and policies into constitutions around the globe. Through alchemy of international engagement, constitutional reform, legislative implementation, and jurisprudential vindication informed by legal scholars and civil society change agents environmental constitutionalism is undeniably an influential and growing field of law and public policy with potential to advance and improve environmental outcomes in ways that only outright constitutionalism can. Environmental constitutionalism’s emergence is nothing short of astonishing. Arguably owing its genesis to the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights, and 1966’s twin international covenants on Civil and Political and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, it entered the lexicon at 1972’s Stockholm Convention on the Human Environment, which is widely considered to be the global impetus that sparked the exponential growth of international, regional and national environmental law regimes, including their rights related aspects.
Keywords: Environmental Law, Environmental Constitutionalism, Human Rights
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