Human Rights and the Environment: Where Next?

The relationship between human rights and environmental protection in international law is far from straightforward. A new attempt to codify and develop international law on this subject was initiated by the UN Human Rights Council in 2011. The chapter explores three possibilities for codification and progressive development: Procedural rights are the most important environmental addition to human rights law since the 1992 Rio Declaration, and any attempt at codification must take this into account. Second, there is a case for articulating a right to a decent environment in substantive terms, but it should be located within the framework of economic and social rights. Third, the extra-territorial application of existing human rights treaties to transboundary pollution and global climate change remains unresolved. If human rights law is to address such issues it needs to treat the global environment and climate change as the common concern of humanity.