Evadne Grant | University of the West of England (original) (raw)

Papers by Evadne Grant

The Northern Ireland legal quarterly, Jul 9, 2020

Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, Sep 16, 2022

On 5 October 2020 a high-level international conference, 'Human Rights for the Planet', was held ... more On 5 October 2020 a high-level international conference, 'Human Rights for the Planet', was held at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg. The conference was organized at the initiative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia, the first Member State of the Council of Europe to make environmental protection a priority theme during its Presidency of the Committee of Ministers. The conference gathered renowned practitioners and academic experts in the field of international environmental law and human rights; the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; the Secretary General of the Council of Europe; the ECtHR's Presidents and judges; ambassadors; politicians and decision-makers; as well as a record number of online participants comprising civil society, human rights and environment defenders, academics, students and concerned citizens. The conference aimed to facilitate a debate about European human rights law in the face of the challenge posed by climate change, loss of biodiversity, depletion of natural resources and pollution. This debate is extended into this Special Issue (SI) of the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment and by the drafting of the Strasbourg Principles of International Environmental Human Rights Law (Strasbourg Principles). The articles featured here reflect the main themes of the conference. They address novel and complex legal issues that are emerging in the theory and practice of environmental human rights law. The SI begins with a conversation between Robert Spano, the President of the ECtHR and Philippe Sands, a distinguished lawyer specializing in international and environmental law. The main transversal themes of this interview are the harmonious interpretation of human rights law and environmental law, the dynamic nature of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and its inherently anthropocentric focus. The debate about the role of the European Court is frank and pragmatic. The editors of the JHRE are indebted to President Spano and Philippe Sands for their willingness to contribute to this SI and for their forthright engagement with the debate regarding the role of the ECtHR in the light of new challenges arising from climate change litigation in particular, and the pressing need to address the potentially devastating consequences of environmental degradation in general. The key themes that emerge from the conversation between Spano and Sands are interrogated in the articles that follow. The first two articles specifically question the existing anthropocentric focus of the jurisprudence of the ECtHR and argue that a paradigm shift is needed in order to address the current biodiversity and climate emergencies. These contributions offer a comparative overview of the practice of

South African Journal on Human Rights, 1989

The right to water: Politics, Governance and Social Struggles, 2011

Environmental Rights, 2019

This chapter considers the establishment of environmental rights standards by the Inter-American ... more This chapter considers the establishment of environmental rights standards by the Inter-American Commission and Court of Human Rights. The discussion includes discussion of the Inter-American Court's seminal Advisory Opinion on the Environment and Human Rights (2017).

Environmental Rights: The Development of Standards (edited by Turner et al), 2019

This chapter considers the establishment of environmental rights standards by the Inter-American ... more This chapter considers the establishment of environmental rights standards by the Inter-American Commission and Court of Human Rights. The discussion includes discussion of the Inter-American Court's seminal Advisory Opinion on the Environment and Human Rights (2017).

South African journal on human rights, 1989

This Report argues that the UK Government has a clear and urgent duty to fully investigate the hu... more This Report argues that the UK Government has a clear and urgent duty to fully investigate the human rights implications of fracking before authorising any exploratory or extractive fracking operations in the UK. It strongly recommends a moratorium on the conduct of fracking operations until such a time as a full, industry-independent, publicly funded Human Rights Impact Assessment has been properly undertaken and placed in the public domain.

Transnational Environmental Law, 2015

Increasing investment in agricultural land by global corporations and investors from wealthy deve... more Increasing investment in agricultural land by global corporations and investors from wealthy developed nations in poorer, less developed countries has significant human rights and environmental impacts. Proponents of such land deals argue that they provide opportunities for improvements in agricultural practices and generate employment, which will benefit economic growth in host countries. However, there is growing evidence that the phenomenon known as ‘land grabbing’ displaces poor and vulnerable populations and damages the environment, which in turn exacerbates poverty and food insecurity. This article explores the impact of land grabbing in Ethiopia and examines the human rights and sustainable development frameworks within which land grabbing takes place. The article argues that a human rights approach is fundamental to reconcile the sustainable development imperatives of economic development and environmental protection in the context of land grabbing. It advocates an integrate...

The 2012 Oñati Workshop on Human Rights and the Environment sought to begin the important task of... more The 2012 Oñati Workshop on Human Rights and the Environment sought to begin the important task of developing a new framework that could contribute to reimagining the relationship between human rights and the environment. Doing full justice to the vibrant and sustained discussion that took place in response to the papers delivered in the Workshop is near impossible in an ex post facto account that can only convey the merest flavour of the richness and complexity of what took place. Nonetheless, the following sections briefly recollect common themes and valuable insights that emerged during the workshop discussions and attempt to Article resulting from the paper presented at the workshop "Human Rights and the Environment: In Search of a New Relationship" held in the International Institute for the Sociology of Law, Oñati, Spain, 14-15 June 2012, and coordinated by Anna Grear (Cardiff University).

The question addressed in this chapter is whether human rights law, as it is currently practised,... more The question addressed in this chapter is whether human rights law, as it is currently practised, adequately recognizes and reflects the complex interdependence of human rights and the environment. In particular, do human rights courts take sufficient account of the complicated ways in which individuals, communities and the environment are interconnected when making decisions in cases concerning the human rights impacts of environmental harm?

International Journal of Discrimination and the Law, 2000

Equality occupies the first place in most written constitutions, but in South Africa, its importa... more Equality occupies the first place in most written constitutions, but in South Africa, its importance is magnified both in terms of the text of the Constitution and in terms of the context in which that Constitution operates. The Bill of Rights is expected, in South Africa, to help bring about the transformation of the society. These expectations of transformation through the operation of the Bill of Rights are informing the development of the law in relation to equality and non-discrimination by the Constitutional Court. The concept of discrimination is uniquely defined in the South African Bill of Rights. The Courts are struggling to give legal effect to the terminology. The test developed by the Court to interpret the equality clause, it is submitted, is comprehensive and informed. But the application of the test is sometimes problematic. This paper addresses the evolving concepts of equality and discrimination in South Africa and discusses some of the difficulties with certain as...

Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, 2015

Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, 2015

The legitimacy of human rights courts in environmental disputes Recent years have seen an increas... more The legitimacy of human rights courts in environmental disputes Recent years have seen an increasing recognition of the strong interconnection between human rights and environmental protection. A growing number of disputes adjudicated in regional human rights courts now deal with environmental aspects of human rights claims and, consequently, a growing body of human rights-related jurisprudence is emerging with direct legal relevance for environmental protection. While this is a welcome, necessary and fascinating development, it raises a number of questions concerning the legitimacy of human rights courts in dealing with environmental issues, most prominent among them whether human rights courts are even the right venue for environmental disputes. On 8 and 9 September 2014, PluriCourts (the Centre of Excellence at the Faculty of Law of the University of Oslo) invited renowned scholars, young academics and judges to exchange views on the legitimacy of adjudication of environmental cases in human rights tribunals. Among the participants were Helen Keller (Judge, European Court of Human Rights), Margarette May Macaulay (former Judge, Inter-American Court of Human Rights), Justice Hansine Donli (former President ECOWAS), Professor Dinah Shelton (George Washington University) and Professor Alan Boyle (University of Edinburgh). The articles in this edition of the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment are predominantly drawn from papers presented at the PluriCourts conference and offer contributions to the ongoing engagement with the theme at its heart. Established in 2013, PluriCourts is a Centre dedicated to the study of the legitimate role/s of the judiciary in the global order. PluriCourts examines such questions as the legitimacy of international courts, from legal, political science and philosophical perspectives, as well as researching and reflecting upon the functioning of International Courts, and their effects. To address its research agenda, PluriCourts focuses on five sectors of international law, namely Human Rights, Trade, Criminal, Investment and Environmental Law. ENVIRONMENTAL SECTOR When it comes to international environmental law the global juridical order places the subject in a very particular position: there are no special international environmental courts exercising jurisdiction over the (by now) hundredsif not thousandsof multilateral treaties that deal with environmental protection. What exist are, on the one hand, so-called non-compliance or review mechanisms and procedures with judicial features under multilateral environmental treaty regimes. These mechanisms deal with issues of non-compliance through facilitative approaches by providing transparency, financial and technological assistance and capacity-building rather than sanctions. Examples include the Compliance Committees under the Kyoto Protocol and the Aarhus Convention on Access to Justice in Environmental Matters.

Thought, Law, Rights and Action in the Age of Environmental Crisis

The aim of the 2012 GNHRE Oñati International Workshop, ‘Human Rights and the Environment: In Sea... more The aim of the 2012 GNHRE Oñati International Workshop, ‘Human Rights and the Environment: In Search of a New Relationship’, was to explore ways of reimagining the relationship between human rights and the environment. One of the most pervasive themes that emerged during the course of thought provoking conversations was the importance of re-establishing vital connections, not only between human rights and the environment, but also between rights, and between individuals, communities and rights. While there is increasing understanding that many, if not all, of the rights protected in international human rights law have an environmental dimension, the extent to which human rights courts are able to incorporate environmental protection into human rights cases is disputed. One of the key problems arising in adjudication of environmental human rights is the failure to recognise and engage with the myriad ways in which individuals, communities and the environment are connected. This failure manifests itself in a number of specific constraints in how environmental concerns are dealt with in human rights adjudication, including rules of standing that focus on individual claimants and the formulation of rights as isolated rather than connected. Despite such constraints, the past three or four decades have seen the development of a significant body of law in which the interconnectedness of human rights and the environment has been recognised and elaborated. Focusing on key cases decided by regional human rights institutions, this paper seeks to interrogate the jurisprudence in order to assess to what extent human rights courts recognise the interconnectedness of human rights and the environment at multiple levels and to consider how existing practice may assist in reimagining the relationship between human rights and the environment in order better to protect the environment.

Thought, Law, Rights and Action in the Age of Environmental Crisis

The original GNHRE Oñati International Workshop 2012-by which this edited collection is inspired,... more The original GNHRE Oñati International Workshop 2012-by which this edited collection is inspired, from which it draws and to which it addswas set up in full knowledge that the relationship between 'human rights' and 'the environment' (both as constructed (legal) domains) remains both complex and fractious. At the institutional level these two domains (even taken as unproblematic referents to commonly understood concerns) still have an uneasy connection notwithstanding increasing evidence of their interconnections, while at the philosophical level it has often been asserted that the individualism of human rights makes them inherently ill-suited, as a moral and juridical category, to address the inherently more collectiveand less 'anthropocentric'-concerns of environmentalism. Human rights and environmental law are also unevenly theorised. Human rights scholarship is richly reflexive, manifesting an intense, sustained and energetic degree of contestation and theoretical disputation. It is multi-faceted and multi-perspectival: its traditional accounts and * This edited collection was inspired by a series of articles resulting from a workshop, 'Human Rights and the Environment: In Search of a New Relationship', held at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law, Oñati, Spain, 14-15 June 2012 and coordinated by Anna Grear (Cardiff University). The editors of this collection would like to thank Karen Morrow, Louis Kotze and Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos for their comments on an earlier version of this introductory chapter-and to thank, in particular, Lorraine Code for her close, analytical engagement with that earlier version; the anonymous reviewers for the Oñati Socio-Legal Series and Sol Picciotto, Cristina Ruiz and Angela Melville for their comments on and support for the original articles by which this collection was inspired.

Routledge Handbook of International Human Rights Law, 2012

The Northern Ireland legal quarterly, Jul 9, 2020

Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, Sep 16, 2022

On 5 October 2020 a high-level international conference, 'Human Rights for the Planet', was held ... more On 5 October 2020 a high-level international conference, 'Human Rights for the Planet', was held at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg. The conference was organized at the initiative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia, the first Member State of the Council of Europe to make environmental protection a priority theme during its Presidency of the Committee of Ministers. The conference gathered renowned practitioners and academic experts in the field of international environmental law and human rights; the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; the Secretary General of the Council of Europe; the ECtHR's Presidents and judges; ambassadors; politicians and decision-makers; as well as a record number of online participants comprising civil society, human rights and environment defenders, academics, students and concerned citizens. The conference aimed to facilitate a debate about European human rights law in the face of the challenge posed by climate change, loss of biodiversity, depletion of natural resources and pollution. This debate is extended into this Special Issue (SI) of the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment and by the drafting of the Strasbourg Principles of International Environmental Human Rights Law (Strasbourg Principles). The articles featured here reflect the main themes of the conference. They address novel and complex legal issues that are emerging in the theory and practice of environmental human rights law. The SI begins with a conversation between Robert Spano, the President of the ECtHR and Philippe Sands, a distinguished lawyer specializing in international and environmental law. The main transversal themes of this interview are the harmonious interpretation of human rights law and environmental law, the dynamic nature of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and its inherently anthropocentric focus. The debate about the role of the European Court is frank and pragmatic. The editors of the JHRE are indebted to President Spano and Philippe Sands for their willingness to contribute to this SI and for their forthright engagement with the debate regarding the role of the ECtHR in the light of new challenges arising from climate change litigation in particular, and the pressing need to address the potentially devastating consequences of environmental degradation in general. The key themes that emerge from the conversation between Spano and Sands are interrogated in the articles that follow. The first two articles specifically question the existing anthropocentric focus of the jurisprudence of the ECtHR and argue that a paradigm shift is needed in order to address the current biodiversity and climate emergencies. These contributions offer a comparative overview of the practice of

South African Journal on Human Rights, 1989

The right to water: Politics, Governance and Social Struggles, 2011

Environmental Rights, 2019

This chapter considers the establishment of environmental rights standards by the Inter-American ... more This chapter considers the establishment of environmental rights standards by the Inter-American Commission and Court of Human Rights. The discussion includes discussion of the Inter-American Court's seminal Advisory Opinion on the Environment and Human Rights (2017).

Environmental Rights: The Development of Standards (edited by Turner et al), 2019

This chapter considers the establishment of environmental rights standards by the Inter-American ... more This chapter considers the establishment of environmental rights standards by the Inter-American Commission and Court of Human Rights. The discussion includes discussion of the Inter-American Court's seminal Advisory Opinion on the Environment and Human Rights (2017).

South African journal on human rights, 1989

This Report argues that the UK Government has a clear and urgent duty to fully investigate the hu... more This Report argues that the UK Government has a clear and urgent duty to fully investigate the human rights implications of fracking before authorising any exploratory or extractive fracking operations in the UK. It strongly recommends a moratorium on the conduct of fracking operations until such a time as a full, industry-independent, publicly funded Human Rights Impact Assessment has been properly undertaken and placed in the public domain.

Transnational Environmental Law, 2015

Increasing investment in agricultural land by global corporations and investors from wealthy deve... more Increasing investment in agricultural land by global corporations and investors from wealthy developed nations in poorer, less developed countries has significant human rights and environmental impacts. Proponents of such land deals argue that they provide opportunities for improvements in agricultural practices and generate employment, which will benefit economic growth in host countries. However, there is growing evidence that the phenomenon known as ‘land grabbing’ displaces poor and vulnerable populations and damages the environment, which in turn exacerbates poverty and food insecurity. This article explores the impact of land grabbing in Ethiopia and examines the human rights and sustainable development frameworks within which land grabbing takes place. The article argues that a human rights approach is fundamental to reconcile the sustainable development imperatives of economic development and environmental protection in the context of land grabbing. It advocates an integrate...

The 2012 Oñati Workshop on Human Rights and the Environment sought to begin the important task of... more The 2012 Oñati Workshop on Human Rights and the Environment sought to begin the important task of developing a new framework that could contribute to reimagining the relationship between human rights and the environment. Doing full justice to the vibrant and sustained discussion that took place in response to the papers delivered in the Workshop is near impossible in an ex post facto account that can only convey the merest flavour of the richness and complexity of what took place. Nonetheless, the following sections briefly recollect common themes and valuable insights that emerged during the workshop discussions and attempt to Article resulting from the paper presented at the workshop "Human Rights and the Environment: In Search of a New Relationship" held in the International Institute for the Sociology of Law, Oñati, Spain, 14-15 June 2012, and coordinated by Anna Grear (Cardiff University).

The question addressed in this chapter is whether human rights law, as it is currently practised,... more The question addressed in this chapter is whether human rights law, as it is currently practised, adequately recognizes and reflects the complex interdependence of human rights and the environment. In particular, do human rights courts take sufficient account of the complicated ways in which individuals, communities and the environment are interconnected when making decisions in cases concerning the human rights impacts of environmental harm?

International Journal of Discrimination and the Law, 2000

Equality occupies the first place in most written constitutions, but in South Africa, its importa... more Equality occupies the first place in most written constitutions, but in South Africa, its importance is magnified both in terms of the text of the Constitution and in terms of the context in which that Constitution operates. The Bill of Rights is expected, in South Africa, to help bring about the transformation of the society. These expectations of transformation through the operation of the Bill of Rights are informing the development of the law in relation to equality and non-discrimination by the Constitutional Court. The concept of discrimination is uniquely defined in the South African Bill of Rights. The Courts are struggling to give legal effect to the terminology. The test developed by the Court to interpret the equality clause, it is submitted, is comprehensive and informed. But the application of the test is sometimes problematic. This paper addresses the evolving concepts of equality and discrimination in South Africa and discusses some of the difficulties with certain as...

Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, 2015

Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, 2015

The legitimacy of human rights courts in environmental disputes Recent years have seen an increas... more The legitimacy of human rights courts in environmental disputes Recent years have seen an increasing recognition of the strong interconnection between human rights and environmental protection. A growing number of disputes adjudicated in regional human rights courts now deal with environmental aspects of human rights claims and, consequently, a growing body of human rights-related jurisprudence is emerging with direct legal relevance for environmental protection. While this is a welcome, necessary and fascinating development, it raises a number of questions concerning the legitimacy of human rights courts in dealing with environmental issues, most prominent among them whether human rights courts are even the right venue for environmental disputes. On 8 and 9 September 2014, PluriCourts (the Centre of Excellence at the Faculty of Law of the University of Oslo) invited renowned scholars, young academics and judges to exchange views on the legitimacy of adjudication of environmental cases in human rights tribunals. Among the participants were Helen Keller (Judge, European Court of Human Rights), Margarette May Macaulay (former Judge, Inter-American Court of Human Rights), Justice Hansine Donli (former President ECOWAS), Professor Dinah Shelton (George Washington University) and Professor Alan Boyle (University of Edinburgh). The articles in this edition of the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment are predominantly drawn from papers presented at the PluriCourts conference and offer contributions to the ongoing engagement with the theme at its heart. Established in 2013, PluriCourts is a Centre dedicated to the study of the legitimate role/s of the judiciary in the global order. PluriCourts examines such questions as the legitimacy of international courts, from legal, political science and philosophical perspectives, as well as researching and reflecting upon the functioning of International Courts, and their effects. To address its research agenda, PluriCourts focuses on five sectors of international law, namely Human Rights, Trade, Criminal, Investment and Environmental Law. ENVIRONMENTAL SECTOR When it comes to international environmental law the global juridical order places the subject in a very particular position: there are no special international environmental courts exercising jurisdiction over the (by now) hundredsif not thousandsof multilateral treaties that deal with environmental protection. What exist are, on the one hand, so-called non-compliance or review mechanisms and procedures with judicial features under multilateral environmental treaty regimes. These mechanisms deal with issues of non-compliance through facilitative approaches by providing transparency, financial and technological assistance and capacity-building rather than sanctions. Examples include the Compliance Committees under the Kyoto Protocol and the Aarhus Convention on Access to Justice in Environmental Matters.

Thought, Law, Rights and Action in the Age of Environmental Crisis

The aim of the 2012 GNHRE Oñati International Workshop, ‘Human Rights and the Environment: In Sea... more The aim of the 2012 GNHRE Oñati International Workshop, ‘Human Rights and the Environment: In Search of a New Relationship’, was to explore ways of reimagining the relationship between human rights and the environment. One of the most pervasive themes that emerged during the course of thought provoking conversations was the importance of re-establishing vital connections, not only between human rights and the environment, but also between rights, and between individuals, communities and rights. While there is increasing understanding that many, if not all, of the rights protected in international human rights law have an environmental dimension, the extent to which human rights courts are able to incorporate environmental protection into human rights cases is disputed. One of the key problems arising in adjudication of environmental human rights is the failure to recognise and engage with the myriad ways in which individuals, communities and the environment are connected. This failure manifests itself in a number of specific constraints in how environmental concerns are dealt with in human rights adjudication, including rules of standing that focus on individual claimants and the formulation of rights as isolated rather than connected. Despite such constraints, the past three or four decades have seen the development of a significant body of law in which the interconnectedness of human rights and the environment has been recognised and elaborated. Focusing on key cases decided by regional human rights institutions, this paper seeks to interrogate the jurisprudence in order to assess to what extent human rights courts recognise the interconnectedness of human rights and the environment at multiple levels and to consider how existing practice may assist in reimagining the relationship between human rights and the environment in order better to protect the environment.

Thought, Law, Rights and Action in the Age of Environmental Crisis

The original GNHRE Oñati International Workshop 2012-by which this edited collection is inspired,... more The original GNHRE Oñati International Workshop 2012-by which this edited collection is inspired, from which it draws and to which it addswas set up in full knowledge that the relationship between 'human rights' and 'the environment' (both as constructed (legal) domains) remains both complex and fractious. At the institutional level these two domains (even taken as unproblematic referents to commonly understood concerns) still have an uneasy connection notwithstanding increasing evidence of their interconnections, while at the philosophical level it has often been asserted that the individualism of human rights makes them inherently ill-suited, as a moral and juridical category, to address the inherently more collectiveand less 'anthropocentric'-concerns of environmentalism. Human rights and environmental law are also unevenly theorised. Human rights scholarship is richly reflexive, manifesting an intense, sustained and energetic degree of contestation and theoretical disputation. It is multi-faceted and multi-perspectival: its traditional accounts and * This edited collection was inspired by a series of articles resulting from a workshop, 'Human Rights and the Environment: In Search of a New Relationship', held at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law, Oñati, Spain, 14-15 June 2012 and coordinated by Anna Grear (Cardiff University). The editors of this collection would like to thank Karen Morrow, Louis Kotze and Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos for their comments on an earlier version of this introductory chapter-and to thank, in particular, Lorraine Code for her close, analytical engagement with that earlier version; the anonymous reviewers for the Oñati Socio-Legal Series and Sol Picciotto, Cristina Ruiz and Angela Melville for their comments on and support for the original articles by which this collection was inspired.

Routledge Handbook of International Human Rights Law, 2012

Human Rights and the Planet, 2022

Leading scholars and practitioners discuss the approach to environmental human rights in differen... more Leading scholars and practitioners discuss the approach to environmental human rights in different jurisdictions and ways in which the European Court of Human Rights could adapt its principles and practice in light of the evolving international environmental human rights corpus iuris.

In the climate-pressed Anthropocene epoch, nothing could be more urgent than fresh engagements wi... more In the climate-pressed Anthropocene epoch, nothing could be more urgent than fresh engagements with the fractious relationships between ‘humanity’, law and the living order. This timely book intelligently combines theoretical reflections, doctrinal analyses and insights drawn from rights-based praxis to offer thoughtful – and at times provocative – engagements with the limitations of law as it faces the complexities of contemporary socio-ecological life-worlds in an age of climate crisis.

Leading scholars in the field discuss, in four parts, Philosophical Investigations, Reconfiguring the Legal, Activism and Praxis, and Multi-level Reformulations, to offer imaginative intellectual engagements with a range of challenges vexing the human-environmental-legal ‘interface’.

Scholars and students of human rights and environmental law and practitioners in the field alike will find the book to be a timely and thoughtful engagement with urgent human dilemmas.