Environmental Rights in Europe and Beyond

Environmental Rights in Europe and Beyond: Setting the Scene

With a warning of the rapid growth in global population, energy, use, resource depletion, and food production could not no be sustained indefinitely... and would eventually confront the earth's biophysical limits. Dealing with the environmental crises by introducing

the concept of rights.

Environmental Rights as Rights of Nature

• Environment capable of holding its own legal rights.

• In 2008, Ecuador's Constitution recognized inalienable rights

• Outstanding issues relating to rights of nature include

  questions as to how they ought to be enforced, by whom, and with what consequences.

Multiple Choice

• In 2017 India granted certain rivers and glaciers the same legal rights as humans.

• True

• False

Environmental Rights as Human Rights to the Environment

Anthropocentric approach

• Environmental Rights as an Autonomous Human Right to the Environment

• Environment Rights as Existing Human Rights

Environmental Rights as Participatory Rights

• Focuses on the procedure and providing opportunities, and abilities to participate in environmental policy-making processes.

• ECHR https://youtu.be/yC1ndo8yX0w

Multiple Select

The European Convention on Human Rights includes:

• Freedom of Speech

• Freedom of Assembly

• Right to Life

• Liberty

• Equality

AARHUS CONVENTION

Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters, which has many parties among countries in Europe and central Asia, includes detailed obligations on providing for public participation in environmental decision-making

Multiple Choice

• Aarhus Convention is a human rights treaty as an environmental one.

• True

• False

Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development

“Environmental issues are best handled with participation of all concerned citizens, at the relevant level… Each individual shall have… the opportunity to participate in decision-making processes.”

Looking ahead

• The various regulatory ideas that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s are still current today.

• Environmental rights have progressed, towards the establishment in a number of jurisdictions.

• The vagueness of the concept of "environmental rights" has undoubtedly contributed to the term's longevity in legal debates.