Environmental Rights (LAWS70386)

With policy and law-makers under pressure to subordinate environmental concerns to short-term economic imperatives, environmental advocates are increasingly looking to human rights as a means of reinforcing the importance of environmental protection to human welfare. Domestic, regional and international human rights laws present a range of opportunities and challenges for addressing harms done to the environment.  There are also a number of conceptual concerns with framing environmental issues in terms of human rights.  Students will work as a class and in small groups to understand the relationship between human rights law and environmental protection at domestic, regional and international levels. The subject will provide insight into strategic aspects of human rights advocacy for the environment, using case studies to explore the roles of state and non-state actors in environmental protection and to consider a range of approaches in the different regions of the world.  Resources drawing from academic, policy and advocacy material will be used to interrogate practical and critical perspectives on human rights law and environmental protection.

Principal topics include:

• The relationship between human rights and the environment in theory and practice
• Human rights that protect the environment, including general rights such as the rights to privacy, health and to information as well as specific rights ‘to’ and ‘of’ the environment
• Domestic, regional and international governance of human rights in relation to the environment
• Sustainable development and its relevance to issues of human rights and the environment in the different regions of the world
• The implications of human rights law for indigenous peoples and environmental protection
• The roles and responsibilities of non-state actors in relation to ‘environmental rights’, including environmental advocates and businesses
• Channels for redress beyond formal legal mechanisms for people and for ‘nature’.