Introduction

Over the past sixty years, international human rights law and then international environmental law developed as distinct domains of international law. Almost from the emergence of contemporary international environmental law in the late 1960s, a relationship between the two areas was strongly perceived. In 1972, the governments participating in the first major multilateral conference on the environment, held in Stockholm, proclaimed in the concluding Stockholm Declaration that “[t]he protection and improvement of the human environment is a major issue which affects the well-being of peoples.” Report of the U.N. Conference on the Human Environment, Declaration of the U.N. Conference on the Human Environment, U.N. Doc. A/CONF.48/14/Rev.1, p. 3 (June 5–16, 1972). As we saw in Chapter 1, the Stockholm Declaration also solemnly declared, in the language of human rights, that “[m]an has the fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being, and he bears a solemn responsibility to protect and improve the environment for present and future generations.” Id. at p. 4 (Principle 1).

During the preparations for the Stockholm Conference and increasingly thereafter, states began adopting constitutional provisions concerning the environment, often using rights language. In the 1980s, the linkage between human rights and the environment recognized in the Stockholm Declaration was enshrined in binding international agreements.