6th Global Conference
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Monday 2nd July - Thursday 5th
July 2007
Mansfield College, Oxford
Session 9: Rights, Movements and Cooperative Approaches
Chair: Vikram Malik
Fundamental Environmental Rights in EU Law
Sofia
de Abreu Ferreira
Law Department, European University Institute
The process of “constitutionalisation” of the Community legal order is taking place through the interpenetration of different systems of human/fundamental/environmental rights protection in Europe (multi-level constitutional space). This has implications for all areas of competence of the EU, with the environmental sector being an especially rich “laboratory”. The question of linking the protection of the environment with human/fundamental rights – “environmental rights” – has gained prominence during the last three decades at the national, regional and at the international level. The legal solutions put in practice in Europe in order to tackle such a linkage are threefold. A first solution mobilized existing human rights, such as the right to life, to achieve environmental protection. This has been the approach adopted by the European Court of Human Rights. A second possibility passed by the establishment of a substantive fundamental right to environmental protection, belonging to the theoretical category of the so-called “solidarity rights” or “third generation rights”. This approach has been followed at the national level in the constitutional law of some of Member States of the EU. A last prospect considers the difficulty of establishing an operational substantive environmental right therefore focusing instead on procedural/collaborative manifestations of such a right, such as access to information or public participation in environmental matters, to attain environmental protection. Such rights have been legally foreseen in the “Aarhus Convention”, which has been recently implemented into EC law and to which the EC is a party. This paper will, firstly, dwell on the theoretical underpinnings of fundamental environmental rights. Secondly, it will analyse the different “legal avenues” (above), used in Europe, to shape fundamental environmental rights. Lastly, it will focus on one of such “avenues”, that of fundamental environmental rights as procedural rights (in particular, the regime of the right of environmental information), in order to frame these rights in the context of the “constitutionalisation” of the EU legal order.
India’s Environmental Movements – The Case of NBA
Shulan
Zhang
Shandong University, China
This paper analyzed the characteristics of India’s environmental NGOs and set forth three key factors which affected the results of India’s environmental NGOs, by summing up NBA’s struggling phases and achievements, allied strategies, attitudes and positions of Indian governments and political parties towards the environmental NGOs.