Abstract

-Kotzé LJ. 2018. “In Search of a Right to a Healthy Environment in International Law: Jus Cogens Norms” in Knox J and Pejan R (eds). The Human Right to a Healthy Environment (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge). 136-154. 3 Stars

A right is generally taken to mean an entitlement (usually juridically embedded at an apex constitutional level) to which morality or valid rules of law give people a claim. Although there is disagreement on its exact formulation, the right to a healthy environment could be understood to mean in trite terms the right to an ecologically balanced, sustainable, healthy, clean, or satisfactory environment that permits healthy living for human (and sometimes non-human) entities on Earth. An example of such a formulation is found in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa of 1996; numerous other domestic constitutions also currently provide for such a right. To this end, the right to a healthy environment has arguably become “global” in the sense that it has spread transnationally, and it continues to infiltrate domestic legal orders, creating a transnational environmental constitutional constellation or normative web that spans the globe and that increasingly shares common characteristics.