Implementing Environmental Rights

Abstract

Abstract For more than four decades, the world has witnessed a dramatic rise in the number of legal instruments advancing a rights-based approach to environmental protection. These “environmental rights” seek to overcome the impotence of environmental law and regulatory schemes by invoking the authority of fundamental rights, human dignity, and Indigenous cosmologies. But do environmental rights make a difference? If so, under what circumstances? The field of comparative environmental politics is fundamentally concerned with analyzing the sources of national variation in environmental performance. Despite having been around for nearly half a century, scholars and practitioners are just beginning to understand the conditions under which environmental rights produce meaningful outcomes. This chapter represents the first effort to take stock of extant knowledge about the implementation of human and non-human rights pertaining to the natural environment. In particular, the authors review existing literature on the effects of environmental rights and highlight the conceptual and practical issues associated with evaluating their efficacy. The chapter closes by outlining environmental, legal, political, and social outcomes worthy of further study.