Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Edited Legal Collections Data

Bosselmann, Klaus --- "Environmental and human rights in ethical context" [2015] ELECD 683; in Grear, Anna; Kotzé, J. Louis (eds), "Research Handbook on Human Rights and the Environment" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015) 531

Book Title: Research Handbook on Human Rights and the Environment

Editor(s): Grear, Anna; Kotzé, J. Louis

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781782544425

Section: Chapter 24

Section Title: Environmental and human rights in ethical context

Author(s): Bosselmann, Klaus

Number of pages: 20

Abstract/Description:

There is increasing legal recognition that environmental degradation can result in deprivation of existing human rights, but also that mere recognition of such deprivations is not enough to promote and secure a healthy environment; hence the call for a human right to a decent (or healthy) environment. However, all human activities, including those associated with human rights, occur within ecological settings. This raises the issue of whether environmental ‘rights’ need to be complemented by ‘responsibilities’, either in the form of ecological limitations to human and environmental rights or by recognizing genuine ecological rights (‘rights of nature’). The ecological approach to environmental and human rights remains a crucially important, yet largely unresolved issue of contemporary jurisprudence and constitutionalism. The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate how the influence of ecological thought in environmental ethics is shifting our traditional thinking about human rights and how it is promoting a restructured framework of human rights in an ecological context.