International Environmental Rights Research Articles

Calibrating the Human Rights Committee for Environmental Justice and Sustainable Development

In this paper, the term sustainable development is used to indicate environment-friendly development. Here a comparative case study is made between Bangladesh and Paraguay to comprehend the difference an international forum can offer in mitigating anthropocentric environmental degradation arising from unsustainable development. From Bangladesh’s perspective, this paper finds that individual victims have limited access to justice to challenge environmental harm or risk. Whereas in the case of Paraguay, victims of unsustainable development after exhaustion of national forum can avail remedy from the Human Rights Committee (HRC) constituted under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The “views” of the HRC in the Portillo Cáceres and others v. Paraguay1 communication recognizing “the State’s obligation to prevent environmental degradation to ensure the right to life in a healthy environment” – has unfolded a new avenue for individual access to environmental justice through human rights mechanism. The individual communication, State-toState complaint, and inquiry – provided by the HRC might be instrumental to challenge the degradation of the anthropocentric environment impairing the human rights guaranteed by the ICCPR. This paper argues that instead of creating new international environmental rights or courts, the use of the HRC might offer accessible justice in terms of the cost and complexity when national remedies are inadequate or exhausted against the unsustainable development risking human rights within a State party.

An economic analysis of international environmental rights

This article offers a descriptive and normative economic analysis of international environmental rights. States, sovereignty, international negotiations, and international law resemble legal persons, property, the market, and private law, respectively. Just as the initial entitlement of persons’ property rights is important to increasing welfare when transaction costs are significant, so too is that of states’ sovereignty rights, including those regarding the environment. What is the initial entitlement of these rights? Is this relatively efficient? How are these rights protected? The article considers three possible initial entitlements. First, states’ right to cause transboundary environmental harm and, second, their right to be free therefrom are each rejected due to weak theoretical support and insufficient state practice. These initial entitlements would also be less efficient. In contrast, an initial entitlement consisting of both the prevention of transboundary harm and the equitable use of shared natural resources is supported by theory and practice. This entitlement appears relatively efficient, and the relevant legal instruments reveal an implicit underlying economic logic. These international environmental rights are generally protected by mechanisms that resemble liability.

An Economic Analysis of International Environmental Rights

This article offers a descriptive and normative economic analysis of international environmental rights. States, sovereignty, international negotiations, and international law resemble legal persons, property, the market, and private law, respectively. Just as the initial entitlement of persons’ property rights is important to increasing welfare when transaction costs are significant, so too is that of states’ sovereignty rights, including those regarding the environment. What is the initial entitlement of these rights? Is this relatively efficient? How are these rights protected? The article considers three possible initial entitlements. First, states’ right to cause transboundary environmental harm and, second, their right to be free therefrom are each rejected due to weak theoretical support and insufficient state practice. These initial entitlements would also be less efficient. In contrast, an initial entitlement consisting of both the prevention of transboundary harm and the equitable use of shared natural resources is supported by theory and practice. This entitlement appears relatively efficient, and the relevant legal instruments reveal an implicit underlying economic logic. These international environmental rights are generally protected by mechanisms that resemble liability.

Environmental rights in Ethiopia: Shifting from theory to practical realization

Influenced by developments in the international environmental rights law, most African countries now incorporate in their Constitutions or other major legal documents environmental rights for their citizens. The 1995 Federal Constitution of Ethiopia, its environmental policy, and all subsequent legislation also incorporate environmental rights that are in the major international environmental law conventions. These rights include the right to a clean and healthy environment, the right to access justice, as well as the right to information and public participation. However, the environmental rights that are included in the country’s Constitution, policies and laws are simply rhetorical. For example, in Addis Ababa, the country’s capital, residents suffer from such horrendous odour oozing out of the putrefaction of the environment. Consequently, children and even adults are affected by various diseases such as respiratory and skin infections. Some residents even abandon their homes, not being able to resist the pollution of their environment. The government’s lack of human resource capacity and appropriate technology to promote a healthy and safe environment; its preference of economic growth over environmental protection; environmental corruption; and poor responsiveness of the public, the policy makers, the executive, as well as the judicial organs such as the police and the court to environmental rights, are among the major causes of poor implementation. The article examines how environmental rights could be given due attention as an extension of basic human rights and as a tool for sustainable economic development. Keywords : Environmental rights, theory, practice, factors for poor enforcement, Ethiopia.

Environmental Rights in Marine Spaces

Environmental rights are typically regarded as an extension of human rights into environmental matters. They encompass both substantive rights, such as the right to a healthy environment, and procedural rights, which include access to environmental information, participation in decision-making and access to justice. Environmental rights discourse has been used to deepen our understanding of how and why we protect the natural world. This discourse is mainly focused on rights arising from terrestrial activities. Similarly, leading international environmental rights jurisprudence is dominated by matters related to land use. Arguably this focus is the by-product of a nexus between people and lived space – a nexus that facilitates an awareness, realisation and protection of individual rights arising in terrestrial spaces. However, such a nexus appears to be either absent or under-developed in marine contexts. At best, generally fashioned environmental rights spill over into marine environments. Significantly, no human rights instrument explicitly refers to the oceans, but the inherent and universal nature of human rights implies they extent to ocean spaces. This is reflected in legal texts particular to marine spaces which have little if anything to say about human rights. This chapter explores this phenomenon from an international law perspective, and explains why the marine environment seems to resist or at least exist at the margins of environmental rights discourse: why there is a ‘dissonance’ between environmental rights and human activities at sea. By understanding why environmental rights are marginalised we can begin to take steps to bring this discourse to the fore in developing the regulation of marine spaces. Arguably, this is best done by creating space for greater local engagement in marine regulation (participatory rights), and by recognising the different connections that people have with both ocean spaces and things (substantive rights).