Legal accountability, human rights and the environment: identifying thresholds and (im)possibilities

Michelle Duin

Chapter 14 in Research Handbook on Accountability for Human Rights Violations, 2025, pp 239-259 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: In recent years, the recognition of the links between human rights and the environment has greatly increased. Human rights bodies, whether on an international, regional, or national level, have acknowledged that environmental problems, such as environmental pollution and climate change, implicate the effective enjoyment of existing human rights. However, rights-holders encounter difficulties when enforcing their human rights in the context of the environment. In the absence of a justiciable human right to a decent, healthy, safe, clean, or sustainable environment, environmental harm needs to reach a certain (often high) threshold for the harm to fall within the scope of existing human rights safeguarded in treaties that are not specifically designed for (transboundary) environmental issues. This chapter will focus on such thresholds, identifying some of the thresholds in different regional human rights systems to hold governments accountable for possible failures to regulate and control environmental nuisances, including those caused by corporations. Though looking at the broader human rights law picture (e.g., UN bodies), this chapter will mainly focus on regional human rights bodies.

Keywords: Accountability; Human rights law; Environment; ECtHR; Litigation; Right to a healthy environment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035306923
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