The Environmental Rights Revolution

A Global Study of Constitutions, Human Rights, and the Environment

By David R. Boyd
Categories: Law & Legal Studies, Law & Society, Environmental & Nature Studies, Environmental Politics & Policy, Environmental Law
Series: Law and Society
Publisher: UBC Press
Paperback : 9780774821612, 468 pages, December 2011
Ebook (PDF) : 9780774821629, 468 pages, December 2011

Table of contents

Part 1: The Emergence and Evolution of a New Human Right

1 Constitutions, Human Rights, and the Environment: The Context

2 The Right to a Healthy Environment: Framing the Issues

3 The Prevalence and Enforceability of Environmental Provisions in National Constitutions

4 The Influence of International Law

Part 2: The Constitutional Right to a Healthy Environment in Practice

5 A Framework for Assessing the Legal Influence of the Right to a Healthy Environment

6 Latin America and the Caribbean

7 Africa

8 Asia

9 Eastern Europe

10 Western Europe

Part 3: Evaluating the Impacts of Environmental Provisions in Constitutions

11 Lessons Learned: Practical Experiences with the Right to a Healthy Environment

12 Do Environmental Provisions in Constitutions Influence Environmental Performance?

13 An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Appendices

Appendix 1. Research Methods

Appendix 2. Online Database: All Current Environmental Provisions from National Constitutions

Notes

References

Index

A pioneering account of the rapid spread of the constitutional right to a healthy environment and its effect on laws, court decisions, and peoples’ everyday lives.

Description

The right to a healthy environment has been the subject of extensive philosophical debates that revolve around the question: Should rights to clean air, water, and soil be entrenched in law? David Boyd answers this by moving beyond theoretical debates to measure the practical effects of enshrining the right in constitutions. His pioneering analysis of 193 constitutions and the laws and court decisions of more than 100 nations in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa reveals a positive correlation between constitutional protection and stronger environmental laws, smaller ecological footprints, superior environmental performance, and improved quality of life.

Reviews

Boyd’s book forms an indispensable and influential addition to this literature not only due to the strength and comprehensiveness of its comparative legal analysis, but also because of the important empirical questions it seeks to answer as well as raises for future research. Indeed, by conducting the first serious and systematic empirical study of the environmental implications of the right to a healthy environment, Boyd has moved this field beyond the speculative and abstract arguments typical of earlier scholarship...Boyd’s meticulous examination of the legal status of the right to a healthy environment in close to a hundred countries provides powerful evidence of its salience to legal systemsaround the world...The Environmental Rights Revolution forms an important, pioneering effort for understanding the legal influence and broader significance of the right to a healthy environment. As a result, the variety of empirical puzzles and questions that it leaves in its wake should continue to influence research in this field for many years to come.

- Sebastien Jodoin

What sets this book evidently apart from all the existing publications in the field is its empirical approach…in an earlier endorsement for this book’s marketing, I declared that it ‘breaks new ground in terms of approach, content, scope, and methodology and is well worth a place on the bookshelves of anyone who takes environmental rights and governance seriously’. After this recent reassessment of the book, I can only reiterate these sentiments.

- Louis J Kotzé, Professor, North-West University, South Africa