The Intersection of Human Rights Law and Environmental Law

2019 ◽  
pp. 72-81
Author(s):  
NICKIE NIKOLAOU
Author(s):  
Jérémie Gilbert

This chapter focuses on the connection between the international legal framework governing the conservation of natural resources and human rights law. The objective is to examine the potential synergies between international environmental law and human rights when it comes to the protection of natural resources. To do so, it concentrates on three main areas of potential convergence. It first focuses on the pollution of natural resources and analyses how human rights law offers a potential platform to seek remedies for the victims of pollution. It next concentrates on the conservation of natural resources, particularly on the interconnection between protected areas, biodiversity, and human rights law. Finally, it examines the relationship between climate change and human rights law, focusing on the role that human rights law can play in the development of the current climate change adaptation and mitigation frameworks.


Author(s):  
Affolder Natasha

This chapter assesses international environmental law in the courts of North America. In particular, it explores the minimal engagement of US, Canadian, and Mexican courts with international environmental law. Environmental law cases in Canada, Mexico, and the United States are not immune to international law and international norms. However, international environmental lawyers may be forced to look to some unlikely and unusual places to find international environmental law's normative influence. Environmental law cases in North America seem poised to engage most significantly with international law not in the ‘bright lights’ but rather on the side-lines, where environmental law norms interface with climate law, private international law, Indigenous law, and human rights law.


2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 191-218
Author(s):  
Marie-Catherine Petersmann

This contribution aims to identify the numerous conflicts that arise between environmental protection regulations and specific human rights. By focusing on the case law of regional human rights mechanisms, it highlights the “positive” and the “negative” integration of international environmental law (IEL) within the human rights law (HRL) regime. It argues that these supposedly separate bodies of law are in reality intertwined. The case law analysis of the negative integration of IEL within the HRL regime teaches us that HRL adjudicators have done more than neutrally measure conformity of environmental protection regulations with the HRL regime. While some cases add specific procedural requirements to these environmental protection regulations – Xàkmok Kàsek case – others establish a hierarchy between IEL and HRL – Fredin and Turgut cases – and yet others engage in defining and arguably even producing environmental rights – Herrick and Chapman cases. This contribution provides specific insights into how regional human rights adjudicators resolve conflicts and what consequences result from the judicial techniques in terms of both the content of the respective legal regimes and their hierarchical relationship. It argues that both content and implementation of IEL cannot be understood without integrating HRL adjudicators into the analytical framework.


Author(s):  
Wolfrum Rüdiger

This article examines the role and influence of the principle of solidarity on international human rights law. It analyses the pronouncement of the United Nations on solidarity and the impact of solidarity on some international legal regimes concerned with peace, trade law and environmental law. This article argues that solidarity not only facilitated the internationalization of human rights concerns but also significantly influenced modern doctrines of reparations for human rights victims, the responsibility to protect and humanitarian assistance.


Author(s):  
Medes Malaihollo

AbstractDue diligence is a frequently employed notion in international law, yet much is still to be explored about this concept. This article aims to contribute to an understanding of due diligence obligations in international law, which is useful as it can form the basis for a further clarification of corresponding legal rights of subjects of international law. With this purpose in mind, this article initiates the construction of a working model of due diligence in international law by exploring this notion from two perspectives: an accountability perspective and a regulatory perspective. Subsequently, this article will use this model to compare the operation of due diligence obligations in two branches of international law: international environmental law and international human rights law. In doing so, it will become clear that due diligence contains two core elements: ‘reasonableness’ and ‘good faith’. Moreover, it will become apparent that the operation of due diligence obligations in these two branches has implications for systemic issues in international law. Further research on the operation of due diligence obligations in other branches of international law is therefore recommended.


1996 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 796-818 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominic McGoldrick

This article seeks to present an integrated conception of sustainable development, with particular emphasis on the contribution of international human rights law and theory. Part II considers a structural conception of sustainable development. Part III considers parallels between sustainable development and self-determination. Part IV provides some general reflections on international environmental law and international human rights law in terms of analogous concepts, principles and systems. What similarities are there and what differences? Part V considers the progress made towards recognition of a “human right to the environment”. Part VI considers how international environmental claims could be brought within the existing international human rights complaint systems. Part VII analyses the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in theLopez Ostracase (1994), the leading case on environmental claims to have reached that Court.


2016 ◽  
Vol 110 (3) ◽  
pp. 480-490
Author(s):  
Henry J. Richardson ◽  
Adrien K. Wing

Burns Weston, a member of the Board of Editors of thisJournalfrom 1974 to 1999, and an Honorary Editor thereafter, died unexpectedly on October 28, 2015, late in his eighty-first year, in Iowa City, Iowa. All who knew him, as friend, colleague, student, or collaborator, marveled at his seemingly boundless energy and determination, his focused devotion to whatever project involved him, his deep intellect and flowing humor, his endless imagination for creating a better world, his talent at institution building, and his ongoing curiosity propelling a dedication to achieving progress in the human condition. His professional life featured an inexhaustible determination to use international law to protect human dignity around the world. His interests, expertise, and scholarship in international claims law, human rights law, environmental law, nuclear disarmament, and global governance in particular were surpassing in their consistent excellence, continuous push against familiar doctrinal parameters, and his rich profusion of published scholarship.


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