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Looking back at these complicate relationships between human rights and environmental protection, questions have to be addressed. Why should environmental matters be approached through human rights at all? Which human rights approaches are best?
IV. Human Rights Approaches to Environmental Protection in Practice
Anderson summarized three main human rights approaches to environmental protection: first, mobilizing existing rights to achieve environmental ends; secondly, reinterpreting existing rights to include environmental concerns; and thirdly, creating new rights of an explicitly environmental character . This system is based on the idea that fully existing human rights may offer a great deal to global and local environmental protection, however, they will fall short of meeting desired ends. To provide adequate protection of environmental goods, a new environmental human rights is called up, which should include both procedural and substantive in character.
Existing rights are usually distinguished as (a) civil and political and (b) economic, social and cultural rights and (c) the right of self-determine. Civil and political rights provide for moral and political order; they include the right to life, equality, political participation and association and are based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They can protect civil mobilisation around environmental protection and equity. Economic, social and cultural rights are often referred to as ‘second generation’ rights. They provide standards for individual’s well being. The International Covenant on Economics, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) provides an example. It includes, among other things, the right to health, which recognizes the need for environmental improvement (Article 12) . The right to self-determination would help to solve problems on sovereignty and ethnically distinct groups. The following provides some cases in the EU to examine how three approaches work in practice.
There is plenty of scope for seeking to protect certain environmental rights and interests under the ECHR/HRA. To sum up, the rights of interest divide between the substantive Articles 2(life), 8 (home, private and family life) and Article 1 Protocol 1(peaceful enjoyment of possessions) set out in the Convention, and the procedural guarantees of Article 6(1)(fair hearing) and 14 (no discrimination).
A. Article 8 (the right for home, private and family life)
Article 8 of the ECHR has been invoked in most of the cases involving environmental concerns in situations ranging from severe chemical pollution, to noise pollution caused by aircraft, to the risks posed by the operation of nuclear power stations or the transport of nuclear material. In these types of cases, complaints are based on the right to respect for one’s home and private and family life. It should be noted that Article 8 is the only Convention right to refer expressly to the “economic well-being of the country” as a grounds for interference. “In the environmental context, this raises the question as to whether the standard drawing on the concept has developed in international environmental law”.
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