Abstract

‘The Development of the links between Environmental Standards and Environmental Rights’
This paper and contribution to the symposium would focus on the actual and potential development of links between environmental standards and environmental rights. In focusing on this theme, it will seek to provide input into the discussion relating to each of the three principal stated objectives that have been set for the symposium. Those inputs would be as follows:
Objective 1. – To examine good practices in the implementation of rights-based approaches to environmental protection.
The paper will discuss the extent to which environmental standards have already been linked to or are included within environmental rights. Therefore it will discuss the effectiveness of those constitutional provisions such as those of the constitutions of Kenya and Bhutan that already include fixed quantitated environmental standards. It will also consider the effectiveness of the development of environmental standards through judicial precedent in cases relating to environmental rights. It will finally consider the effectiveness of law that ties environmental rights to specific environmental standards.
Objective 2. – To provide a high-level platform for engaging the global conversation about comparative environmental-rights approaches among policy-makers and governments, practitioners, non-governmental organizations, civil society, scholars, educators, and post-graduate students.
The paper will also address the role that ‘rights’ have as tools within decision-making that affects the environment. As such it will consider the limited role that existing environmental rights have if they only create standards and obligations for state decision-makers. It will therefore discuss the potential that environmental rights have to create standards for non-state actors and how they could potentially create obligations for decision-makers within the fields of corporate law, trade law and international investment.
Objective 3. – To propel the development of training materials to advance rights-based approaches to environmental governance.
The paper will finally address the issue of the type of training materials that can be usefully developed at this stage. It will argue that certain environmental standards have emerged that are linked to the, often vaguely drafted, environmental rights provisions found within sub-national, national or international legal instruments.
It will argue that training materials can be developed for the judiciary, governments and NGOs to provide greater clarity as to the standards that are potentially associated with the environmental rights that they are concerned with.