IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/elg/eechap/15280_12.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

The United Nations, human rights and the environment

In: Research Handbook on Human Rights and the Environment

Author

Listed:
  • Lynda Collins

Abstract

In the past five years, the ‘environmental rights revolution’ reached an apex when two states in Latin America created constitutional rights for nature itself. This development represents the culmination or extension of a decades-long process of codification of environmental rights for humans in more than 90 national constitutions. Constitutional environmental rights have made real, measurable, and substantial impacts on domestic legislation, litigation and, most importantly, environmental performance. In the rise of environmental human rights, it would seem at first blush that individual nation-states have played a dominant role. Regional human rights institutions, influential scholarship and ambitious civil society activism have also made major contributions to the evolution of environmental human rights. The casual observer might reasonably believe that the important efforts of non-United Nations (UN) actors have eclipsed the role of the UN in this field. However, a close examination of the history and progression of environmental human rights throughout the world demonstrates that the UN has played a crucial role in both catalyzing and consolidating the recognition of human rights in the environment. This chapter will survey the UN’s involvement in the emergence of environmental human rights in the global legal order, and will make proposals for future UN action in this area. In particular, the author suggests that the UN should continue to emphasize the necessity of environmental protection in the stewardship of all human rights, while providing guidance on the existence and content of the free-standing right to a healthy environment. A General Assembly resolution clearly recognizing the right to environment would provide a solid foundation on which to begin the process of negotiating a specific binding multi-lateral treaty committing states to respect, protect and promote environmental human rights on all levels.

Suggested Citation

  • Lynda Collins, 2015. "The United Nations, human rights and the environment," Chapters, in: Research Handbook on Human Rights and the Environment, chapter 12, pages 219-244, Edward Elgar Publishing.
  • Handle: RePEc:elg:eechap:15280_12
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.elgaronline.com/view/9781782544425.00019.xml
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Environment; Law - Academic;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:elg:eechap:15280_12. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Darrel McCalla (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.e-elgar.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.