Access to Environmental Justice

Access to environmental justice by non-state actors grafts onto three major postwar developments in international law: (1) the recognition of universal human rights, both civil and political, and social, economic, and cultural; (2) the rise of environmental awareness in the 1960s which led to the flourishing of domestic, regional, and international environmental law; and (3) changes in governance, both nationally and internationally, with an enhanced role for non-state actors in decision-making procedures. This chapter discusses the environment and human rights, and the obstacles to access to...

Access to environmental justice by non-state actors grafts onto three major postwar developments in international law: (1) the recognition of universal human rights, both civil and political, and social, economic, and cultural; (2) the rise of environmental awareness in the 1960s which led to the flourishing of domestic, regional, and international environmental law; and (3) changes in governance, both nationally and internationally, with an enhanced role for non-state actors in decision-making procedures. This chapter discusses the environment and human rights, and the obstacles to access to environmental justice. Many of these obstacles to environmental justice are addressed in the one international instrument to have been concluded addressed to access to justice issues, the Aarhus Convention.