The Right of a Healthy Urban Environment As An Human Right: the Missed Opportunity of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

Abstract

In Latin America, there is lack of basic sanitation, potable water, garbage treatment, etc. Whereas international courts, in particular the European Court of Human Rights, have recognized the need to protect the urban environment as a human right, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) ignores it. To demonstrate this, this article seeks to analyze the normative limits of the current jurisprudence of the Inter-American Commission and Court of Human Rights at the intersection of human rights and environmental foundations, and the possible expansion of the normative scope in environmental decisions, which has been limited to indigenous issues. This article will evaluate the construction of the concept of environmental protection in the Inter-American human rights system and the principal legal arguments made in cases submitted to the Inter-American Commission and Court of Human Rights, with a special focus on the case in which charges were brought against Brazil through this system in response to the installation of the Belo Monte Dam in historically indigenous regions in the Xingu River Basin. Our main focus will be the Court’s lack of consideration of urban environmental law, which is already well advanced in other international courts, such as the European Court of Human Rights.