The Human Right to a Healthy Environment

Description

The absence of a globally recognized right to a healthy environment has not prevented the development of human rights norms relating to the environment. Indeed, one of the most noteworthy aspects of human rights law over the last twenty years is that UN treaty bodies, regional tribunals, special rapporteurs, and other human rights mechanisms have applied human rights law to environmental issues even without a stand-alone, justiciable human right to a healthy environment. In The Human Right to a Healthy Environment, a diverse set of scholars and practitioners, all of whom have been instrumental in defining the relationship between human rights and the environment, provide their thoughts on what is, or should be, the role of an international human right to a healthy environment. The right to a healthy environment could be a capstone to this field of law, could help to provide structure to it, or could move it in new directions. 1. Introduction / John H. Knox and Ramin Pejan -- 2. Catalyst for change: evaluating forty years of experience in implementing the right to a healthy environment / David R. Boyd -- 3. Learning from constitutional environmental rights / Erin Daly and James R. May -- 4. The right to a satisfactory, healthy, and sustainable environment in the African regional human rights system / Lilian Chenwi -- 5. The European Court of Human Rights and international environmental law / Ole W. Pedersen -- 7. Reasoning up: environmental rights as customary internation law / Rebecca M. Bratspies -- 8. In search of a right to a healthy environment in interntional law: jus cogens norms / Louis J. Kotze ́ -- 9. A human right to a healthy environment?: moral, legal, and empirical considerations / Ceśar Rodriǵuez-Garavito -- 10. Quality control of the right to a healthy environment / Marcos Orellana -- 11. The politics of human rights, the environment, and climate change at the Human Rights Council: toward a universal right to a healthy environment? / Marc Limon -- 12. The male ́formulation of the overarching environmental human right / Daniel Magraw and Kristina Wiehof̈er -- 13. Human rights in the climate change regime: from Rio to Paris and beyond / Lavanya Rajamani -- 14. The right to a healthy environment and climate change : mismatch or harmony? / Sumudu Atapattu