The Legal Definition of Environment: From Rights to Duties

Abstract

This Article critiques the perspective that environmental law protects "full" rights. Events such as natural disasters illustrate that it is a profound illusion to conceptualize human kind as the centre of the world and as the "protagonist" of the right, entitled to claim for a particular kind of nature. On the other hand, elements of nature (habitat, fauna, vegetation and so on), which are traditionally included within the general notion of environment, cannot enjoy the legal protection ensured by the right.

Preserving a unitary concept of the environment and even focusing on the results of ethical analysis, this Article will suggest a different purpose. It outlines the need for a legal anthropological perspective and shows that, when dealing with a man - "aggressor" or "victim," the legal system establishes the duty to protect and to respect the environment. As a consequence, the branch of environmental law embraces the area of provisions devoted to setting and disciplining human actions under an obligation to respect and protect nature.

The Article assumes that environmental law has specific principles that the connected science must develop, refine and elaborate: the polluter pays principle, the principle of preventive action, the precautionary principle, the rectification of environmental damage at source. They might easily be translated by using the concepts of duty, solidarity and responsibility. Not only; the common thread in them all is the sustainable development principle, which also might be converted into terms of duty and responsibility.

Hence, the "right" to live in a specific environment can be vested in humanity as a whole only by using a philosophical outlook; nevertheless, this right of "humanity" can only be ensured by imposing concrete "duties" on humankind.

Keywords: environmental law , duties, solidarity

JEL Classification: K32