Thinking about Sustainable Development and Human Rights from the Standpoint of the Post-Graduate Program in Law of Universidade Católica de Santos (original) (raw)
Related papers
Sustainable Development and Human Rights: global perspectives
2024
Book encompassing chapters of guest lectures and moderators of the elective seminar Sustainable Development and Human Rights - global perspectives of the Postgraduate Program in Law of Universidade Católica de Santos, tackling the intersections between human rights and sustainable development, in general, and the SDGs in particular, as a relevant connection between the two issues.
The Right to Development in the Era of Sustainable Development: A Legal Appraisal
37th IBIMA Conference Proceedings, 2021, Cordoba, Spain, 2021
In the context of globalization, to overcome various economic, social, cultural, and humanitarian dilemmas, the most influential international intergovernmental organization, United Nations has proposed a new interdisciplinary paradigm related to the right to development within the overview of initiatives regarding sustainable development. Precisely United Nations' activities have captivated the interest of legal academics and practitioners to analyze in their scientific demarche, as is done in the current paper, the impact of this new paradigm over its beneficiaries: individuals and the global community. Subsequently to the clarification of the essential concepts like as "development", "sustainability" and "sustainable development", according to the parameters of legal descriptive research, it seems appropriate to bring to attention the relevant legal framework related to the right to development, with references both to the hard law-such as United Nation Charter, International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights-and to soft law-such as Declaration on the Right to Development, Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Within the frame of the legal conceptual analyses, the interpretation of the United Nations' regulations offers the perfect reasoning to emphasize, in an innovator approach, the plurality of dimensions of the right to development-social, economic, cultural, politic-which might be revealed by its heterogeneous implementation in different fields of activity, and the principle of interdependence with other human rights, to propose, as personal initiative, the recognition of its sui generis nature and character, thanks to its continuous extension following the evolution of the global community. Based on the same United Nations legal framework and its accordance with current and future desirable moral, political, economical aims, operating with the evaluative method, it is demonstrated that, for satisfying guarantees of promotion and protection of the human rights, generally, and right to development, specifically, States have to be more determined to assume the collective commitments recommended by United Nations and to fulfill intricate duties related to the joint interaction of the right to development with other rights in the context of sustainable development as currently is expressed by and within the global community.
Sustainable development is a contested concept in international law. There is a general consensus on its core features, but disagreement remains as to its nature and status as a principle of international law. Such debates raise fundamental issues in legal theory that can be examined afresh in the light of Ronald Dworkin’s rich body of scholarship. In particular, the notable separate opinions of Justices Weeramantry and Cançado Trindade in cases before the International Court of Justice include various insights regarding the principle of sustainable development and its role in international law that display a number of Dworkinian traits. Both justices adopt conceptions of sustainable development that embrace its role as a foundational legal principle, emphasize its grounding in rights, and insist upon its connection to the moral values of the international community. In the end, these remarkable separate opinions do not simply advance a forward-looking conception of sustainable development, but invite us to adopt a richer, more ambitious, and ultimately more sustainable vision of international law.
Human Rights as a Tool for Sustainable Development
CEFAGE-UE Working …, 2009
In poor as much as in rich countries there is a fear that environmentally sustainable development might be contradictory to development in general and equitable development in particular. There could be indeed a contradiction between environmental and social sustainability, too much care for the environment eventually leading to forgetting about the people. The purpose of this paper is to explore institutional principles and tools that allow the conciliation between environmental and social sustainability. In this respect we will present human rights based political economy as an institutional tool of this sort. We will show how a human-rights based political economy could at the same time respect ecological sustainability and social equity. One of the reasons for that consists in the fact that within a human-rights based political economy, welfare is not the result of economic growth, as within traditional political economy, but of justice. The main objectives of development will be attained, therefore, not through growth but through redistribution of resources or of access to resources. In this paper more specific aspects will be presented by examining the human right to work and the human right to water. Regarding the human right to work the main aspect which will be stressed is that within a human rights frame full employment becomes disconnected from both growth and labour market deregulation. It will be shown that traditional policies not only do not solve unemployment but are also not environmentally and socially sustainable. The only policy that is not contradictory with either human rights and de-growth is work sharing by decreasing the length of the work day. When properly enforced this policy has, indeed, historically shown to be the only one that has created jobs. Regarding the right to water, the point is that democratic and human rights oriented exploitation and distribution policies of water are both more sustainable and more equitable than those that intend to transform water into a private good as any other and, thus, promote commodification and privatisation of resources. This way of controlling water exploitation and distribution not only may relieve pressure from the resource but also alleviate deprivation of poorer families, conciliating, therefore, environmental and social sustainability.
Human Rights Based Sustainable Development: Essential Frameworks for an Integrated Approach
There is a need for a new integrated paradigm that equally regards the social, economic, cultural and environmental pillars as capitals. This paper addresses the theoretical and practical implication that human rights have if placed at the center of sustainable development models. Through an examination of the limits of legal human rights and sustainable economic development, the article offers innovative insights for a rights-based model to implement international sustainable development. The model offers new insights in the discussion of the pillars of sustainability while inspiring a process that is based on responsibilities and rights at the economic, social, environmental, cultural and institutional levels.
International Law & Sustainable Development
The Oxford Handbook on International Law & Development, 2023
Sustainable development was conceptualized in the late 1980s by international development experts in response to concerns that development wreaked an insupportable degree of systemic environmental harm, which needed to be addressed in a manner cognizant of global development inequalities. This chapter explores to what extent the concept of sustainable development as utilized by international laws and institutions has answered these concerns, observing three ways in which sustainable development has replicated rather than rectified preexisting development harms. First, sustainable development has entrenched the assumption that infinite economic growth is desirable and possible. Second, it services the need to periodically reinvent development in the face of past failures. Third, it reinforces the longstanding turn away from root causes of underdevelopment and towards palliative measures in international law and institutions. In these ways, while sustainable development makes the important point that development should be both environmentally and socially beneficial, it is used in a manner that renders such development impossible.
Right to Sustainable Development as One of the Rights of Humanity
Studia Iuridica, 2020
Right of humanity to development is described within the global search for responses to the planetary challenges. The idea of the rights of humanity is an attempt to propose the new approach to human rights protection, based on global interdependency. The article offers analysis of soft law documents on human right to development, as well as regional instruments for protection of human and peoples’ rights. It is argued that right to sustainable development viewed as a right of humanity may create a broader mechanism of protection both for individual human being and humanity in general.
The human rights principle for sustainable development governance
Sustainable development is impossible without a continuous care for the implementation of human rights as made explicit in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the human rights-related principles of the Rio and Rio+20 Declarations. However, a full implementation of human rights would not automatically lead to sustainable development. As an exercise in coordinating complex systems of interlinked socio-economic processes in a dynamic of increasing globalisation, fair and effective sustainable development governance will always be troubled by cognitive complexity and moral pluralism. Even if we would all agree on the knowledge base of a sustainable development related problem, then opinions could still differ about the acceptability of solutions. The natural and social sciences can inform us about the character of options, they cannot always clarify the choice to make. Advancing from this rationale, the paper argues that, added to the fields of human rights concerning a fair socio-economic ‘organisation’ of our society, fair and effective sustainable development governance implies the right for every human ‘to contribute to making sense of what is at stake’. In practice, this social justice based concern for human intellectual capacity building translates as a concern for free and pluralist advanced education, inclusive and transdisciplinary knowledge generation and inclusive, deliberative multi-level decision making. The paper concludes with the argumentation that a rights-based approach to intellectual capacity building, supporting ‘the right to be responsible' for every human, is the only way to enable the possibility of global sustainable development governance in a complex and pluralist world.
Jurnal Hukum Novelty, 2019
Introduction to The Problem: The Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs are development goals in 2030 to carry out environmentally sound development, which explicitly aims to carry out development that is to meet environmental sustainability and is based on human rights. It is also an adaptation of the principles of the Stockholm Declaration 1972. Purpose/Objective Study: This research is to find the principles of environmentally sound development, both within the principles of international law and the SDGs principles, that are expected in future development policies to be carried out in the perspective of the right to the environment, both the central and regional governments. Design/Methodology/Approach: In this doctrinal law research, it is examined using the conceptual approach contained in the principles of development and environmental principles contained in the substance of international law. Findings: In the principles of international law, there are seven principles of sustainable development goals agreed by the international community in the Rio Conference as a guideline in implementing equitable development based on human rights, which also must be guided by the targets of sustainable development within the SDGs.