Re-imagining adjudication: human rights courts and the environment (original) (raw)

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

Abstract

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.

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