-Introduction: Implementing Environmental Constitutionalism

Abstract

That we are living in a period of environmental crisis is no longer news. The day-to-day threats of pollution, desertification, deforestation, and the like make finding clean water, harvesting nourishing food, and even breathing clean air more difficult for billions of human beings around the world. In the coming decades (not centuries or millennia), the rest of the world's population, too, will increasingly find ourselves at the mercy of a less stable climate resulting in more severe storms, more frequent droughts, more intense fires, and so on. Because much of the change in the climate and in our natural environment can be controlled by changes in human behavior, the law has tried to manage the relationship between people and the environment. Environmental constitutionalism -- the constitutional incorporation of substantive and procedural environment rights, responsibilities and remedies to protect the natural environment -- can be an important means for managing this relationship. Environmental constitutionalism has blossomed in all regions of the world, emerging from all legal cultures and manifesting in a wide range of ways as a response to the growing awareness of the fragility of our natural environment and the critical need to preserve what we have. This collection of essays by global experts examines theory, text, experience, and jurisprudence in assessing what works and what needs work. It is intended to inform global conversations about whether and how environmental constitutionalism can be made more effective in protecting the natural environment. If law is to be effective, it must not only establish norms of behavior but must also enable their implementation in practice. Environmental law has accomplished the first -- in more than 500 international agreements, almost all the world's constitutions, and in countless laws and regulations and local ordinances around the world. And yet, implementation of these legal standards lags far behind. Social order and humanity suffer accordingly, as Irma Russell remarks here: “a livable environment is a keystone of our social order and the under girding of human liberty and human dignity.

Keywords: Environmental Law, Natural Environment, Environmental Constitutionalism, Human Liberty