From the “Green Turn” to the Recognition of an Autonomous Right to a Healthy Environment: Achievements and Challenges in the Practice of UN Treaty Bodies

Abstract

Since the end of the 2010s, some of the UN human rights treaty bodies have affirmed and enhanced states’ obligations in relation to the environment. This “green turn,” deeply influenced by the jurisprudence of the regional human rights tribunals and the work of UN Special Procedures, raises the question of the potential recognition of an autonomous right to a healthy environment—that is, a free-standing right that is not primarily derived from existing human rights. The claim of this essay is that in the absence of a clear mandate from states to the treaty bodies to monitor the implementation of the right, its symbolic affirmation will have only limited impact. Inspired by the discussions at the Council of Europe on the adoption of a new Protocol to the European Convention of Human Rights, states at the UN level should go further and work toward a binding protocol. However, this raises the difficult issue of connecting the right to civil and political rights, to economic, social, and cultural rights, or to a specific instrument such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Ultimately, this essay reflects the shortcomings of the binary approach separating human rights into hermetic categories.