پژوهشنامه حقوق تطبیقی (Sep 2023)
Human Rights and the Environment: a Reflection on the Formation and Evolution of "Environmental Human Rights" in International Law
Abstract
For many years, human rights discourse did not pay attention to issues related to the environment. After the formation of the environmental crisis, the topic has been raised whether environmental issues can have human rights dimensions (first layer) or whether human rights issues can also take on environmental dimensions (second layer). The present study follows an analytical-descriptive approach to describe some aspects of human rights and environmental issues, as well as some environmental aspects of human rights issues, and investigate how they are formed. The process of the formation of environmental human rights, especially after the Stockholm and Rio Declarations, shows that human rights (despite older documents) and the environment have developed in parallel until today. The right to clean water, the right to clean air, the right to a peaceful environment, the right to access environmental information, the right to participate in environmental decision-making, and the right to access justice in environmental issues are among the most important and famous components of the development of human rights. The authors’ basic assumption in response to the main question (Do environmental issues have human rights dimensions and can it be said that human rights issues take on environmental dimensions?) is that today, people are faced with a special perception of human rights that should be called the greening of human rights or "environmental human rights". The need to pay attention to the close relationship between human rights and the environment, including the fact that the realization of many human rights depends on the realization of a healthy environment and also environmental rights also require human rights for better implementation, can be the most important finding of this research.
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