Transformative Environmental Constitutionalism

In Transformative Environmental Constitutionalism, Professor Melanie Jean Murcott writes from a Global South perspective, drawing on South African context to provide a transformative theoretical framework for adjudication of environmental law disputes which could be more responsive to social, environmental, and climate injustices.

Reflecting a global trend, scores of countries have affirmed that their citizens are entitled to healthy air, water, and land and that their constitution should guarantee certain environmental rights. This book examines the increasing recognition that the environment is a proper subject for protection in constitutional texts and for vindication by constitutional courts. This phenomenon, which the authors call environmental constitutionalism, represents the confluence of constitutional law, international law, human rights, and environmental law. National apex and constitutional courts are exhibiting a growing interest in environmental rights, and as courts become more aware of what their peers are doing, this momentum is likely to increase. This book explains why such provisions came into being, how they are expressed, and the extent to which they have been, and might be, enforced judicially. It is a singular resource for evaluating the content of and hope for constitutional environmental rights.

Constitutions can play a central role in responding to environmental challenges, such as pollution, biodiversity loss, lack of drinking water, and climate change. The vast majority of people on earth live under constitutional systems that protect the environment or recognize environmental rights. Such environmental constitutionalism, however, falls short without effective implementation by policymakers, advocates and jurists. Implementing Environmental Constitutionalism: Current Global Challenges explains and explores this 'implementation gap'. This collection is both broad and deep. While some of the essays analyze crosscutting themes, such as climate change and the need for rule of law that affect the implementation of environmental constitutionalism throughout the world, others delve deeply into geographically contextual experiences for lessons about how constitutional environmental law might be more effectively implemented. This volume informs global conversations about whether and how environmental constitutionalism can be made more effective to protect the natural environment.

This book examines the relationship between man and nature through different cultural approaches to encourage new environmental legislation as a means of fostering acceptance at a local level. In 2019, the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) recognised that we have entered a new era, the Anthropocene, specifically characterised by the impact of one species, mankind, on environmental change. The Anthropocene is penetrating the discourse of both hard sciences and humanities and social sciences, by posing new epistemological as well as practical challenges to many disciplines. Legal sciences have so far been at the margins of this intellectual renewal, with few contributions on the central role that the notion of Anthropocene could play in forging a more effective and just environmental law. By applying a multidisciplinary approach and adopting a Law as Culture paradigm to the study of law, this book explores new paths of investigation and possible solutions to be applied. New perspectives for the constitutional framing of environmental policies, rights, and alternative methods for bottom-up participatory law-making and conflict resolution are investigated, showing that environmental justice is not just an option, but an objective within reach. The book will be essential reading for students, academics, and policymakers in the areas of law, environmental studies and anthropology.

Over the past 40 years, countries throughout the world have similarly adopted human rights related to environmental governance and protection in national constitutions. Interestingly, these countries vary widely in terms of geography, politics, history, resources, and wealth. This raises the question: why do some countries have constitutional environmental rights while others do not? Bringing together theory from law, political science, and sociology, a global statistical analysis, and a comparative study of constitutional design in South Asia, Gellers presents a comprehensive response to this important question. Moving beyond normative debates and anecdotal developments in case law, as well as efforts to describe and categorize such rights around the world, this book provides a systematic analysis of the expansion of environmental rights using social science methods and theory. The resulting theoretical framework and empirical evidence offer new insights into how domestic and international factors interact during the constitution drafting process to produce new law that is both locally relevant and globally resonant. Scholars, practitioners, and students of law, political science, and sociology interested in understanding how institutions cope with complex problems like environmental degradation and human rights violations will find this book to be essential reading.

This book integrates the insights of environmental constitutionalism and ecological law in a concise, engaging and accessible manner. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental law, ecological law, environmental constitutionalism, sustainability and rights of nature.

Environmental law has failed us all. As ecosystems collapse across the globe and the climate crisis intensifies, environmental agencies worldwide use their authority to permit the very harm that they are supposed to prevent. Growing numbers of citizens now realize they must act before it is too late. This book exposes what is wrong with environmental law and offers transformational change based on the public trust doctrine. An ancient and enduring principle, the trust doctrine asserts public property rights to crucial resources. Its core logic compels government, as trustee, to protect natural inheritance such as air and water for all humanity. Propelled by populist impulses and democratic imperatives, the public trust surfaces at epic times in history as a manifest human right. But until now it has lacked the precision necessary for citizens, government employees, legislators, and judges to fully safeguard the natural resources we rely on for survival and prosperity. The Nature's Trust approach empowers citizens worldwide to protect their inalienable ecological rights for generations to come.

The Earth on Trial examines the degree to which the law has accommodated an increased understanding of the natural environment. Paul Stanton Kibel provides a clear assessment of what conceptual and practical changes are needed to reconcile law to the limits of ecology. By moving the debate between law and the environment beyond specialists, and towards a public forum, The Earth on Trial acknowledges that a healthy environmental future depends not so much on our ability to alter nature to accommodate society, as our ability to alter society to accommodate nature.

While civil society and social movements claim for more effective measures to cope with anthropogenic climate change, legal scholars are witnessing the “aurora” of climate change law. What is quite relevant in this double-process of recognition/establishment is the interdisciplinary nature of such a field of studies, which goes beyond formalistic legal aspects. Based on the need to rethink legal paradigms, “Climate Constitutionalism Momentum: Adaptive Legal Systems” deals with three major means to combat anthropogenic climate change—namely science, politics and law—further addressing the thesis regarding a supposed adaptiveness of legal systems and proposing new pathways for further inquiries on the current climate constitutionalism momentum. The book introduces the international efforts in acknowledging the need for concrete measures to achieve ambitious results, addressing the comparative public law debate, merging theoretical appraisals and quantitative insights under a top-down approach and a civil-law methodology. Furthermore, the book combines theoretical and empirical viewpoints in reference to climate justice and litigation. The last part of the argumentative pattern merges the aforementioned key elements and grounds of investigation, providing an overall account of the current climate constitutionalism momentum. Academic researchers are the book’s primary audience, but it is also targeted for undergraduate and postgraduate students of specific courses. For the numerous insights and the contemporary relevance of the topic, the book is also addressed to political stakeholders and legal practitioners. Given the transnational development of this area of law, the expected audience of the book is global.

This book shows why a fundamental right to an adequate environment ought to be provided in the constitution of any modern democratic state. The importance of securing provision for environmental protection at the constitutional level is now widely recognized. Globally, more than 100 states make some form of provision for environmental protection in their constitutions. A question more hotly debated, though, is whether the provision should take the stringent form of a fundamental right. This book is the first to examine the question from the perspective of political theory. It explains why the right to an environment adequate for one's health and well-being is a genuine human right, and why it ought to be constitutionalized. It carefully elaborates this case and defends it in closely argued responses to critical challenges. It thus shows why there is no insurmountable obstacle to the effective implementation of this constitutional right, and why constitutionalizing this right is not democratically illegitimate. With particular reference to European Union member states, it explains what this right adds to states' existing human rights and environmental commitments. It concludes by showing how constitutional environmental rights can serve to promote the cause of environmental justice in a global context. The book provides illustrations from around the world of how human rights and environmental concerns have been linked to date, and highlights precedents for the future development of a fundamental right to an adequate environment. It will be of value to policy-makers, lawyers, campaigners, and citizens concerned with environmental protection as a public interest and fundamental right. It will provide a valuable resource for students and teachers in politics, philosophy, law, environmental studies, and social sciences more generally. The book makes an original contribution to normative political theory by rethinking rights and justice in the light of contemporary issues and contexts.