Pieraccini, Margherita --- "Reflections on the relationship between environmental regulation, human rights and beyond – with Heidegger" [2015] ELECD 856; in Grear, Anna; Grant, Evadne (eds), "Thought, Law, Rights and Action in the Age of Environmental Crisis" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015) 76

Book Title: Thought, Law, Rights and Action in the Age of Environmental Crisis

Editor(s): Grear, Anna; Grant, Evadne

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781784711320

Section: Chapter 3

Section Title: Reflections on the relationship between environmental regulation, human rights and beyond – with Heidegger

Author(s): Pieraccini, Margherita

Number of pages: 20

Abstract/Description:

Let us labour to demonstrate how we must become aware of ourselves. No-one yet has made the crossing from nature to society, or vice versa, and no-one ever will. There is no such boundary to be crossed. The separation of human rights from environmental protection has been questioned extensively in the legal literature ever since the connections between the two were first made by Principle 1 of the Stockholm Declaration 1972 on the Human Environment. A variety of scholarly approaches have been proposed over the years to understand the ways in which the borders of the human rights rubric are, can or should be redrawn to incorporate environmental considerations. The most popular options include strengthening procedural environmental rights, creating a new substantive right to a satisfactory environment or reinterpreting existing human rights to protect the environment. These options are principally the outcome of sophisticated empirical analyses that have enriched our understanding of (human) rights perspectives on environmental protection. I propose to re-think the debate between human rights and environment by stepping away from these popular rights-based approaches, focusing instead on the interactions of environmental regulation and human rights as two legal fields. I argue that the way in which we are able to think about the possible interactions between these two legal fields is determined by certain philosophical assumptions concerning humanity and environment.