Pervasive environmental harm that disproportionately impacts vulnerable members of society is left largely unregulated across the globe despite existing legal commitments to human rights and environmental protection in many states. To address this shortcoming, Stefan Theil proposes a new normative framework for environmental protection through human rights law. In clear and accessible prose, he demonstrates how such a human rights-based approach can strengthen environmental protection without requiring radical departures from established protection regimes and legal principles. The environmental minimum developed in the book translates the general and abstract commitments of states into specific and practical measures that protect the environment. The framework develops the doctrine of international, regional, and domestic courts, analysed through an innovative approach that improves contextual awareness. This book is thus a valuable resource for lawyers, social scientists, political theorists, environmental and human rights advocates.

A practical human rights approach strengthens environmental protection without requiring radical departures from established protection regimes and legal principles.

This book explains the functioning of shared competences in environmental protection by focusing on member states' interaction with the EU framework. By studying this interaction, Squintani reveals room for improving the level of environmental protection, legal certainty, and efficiency of the system for environmental protection envisaged under the EU Treaties. Accordingly, this book makes a contribution to EU environmental law and policy, but also should be of interest to constitutional lawyers more generally and to scholars working in any field of EU policy and law in which minimum harmonisation is used. Thanks to its focus and clear, accessible prose, this book is also valuable additional reading material for environmental law courses, and to those involved in decision-making in the EU.

This book presents an argument for establishing environmental human rights as the legitimate possession of both present and future generations. It uses these rights - to clean air, water, and soil - to make an argument for justice across generations, that is, for recognizing the obligation that present generations have to preserve the environment and natural resources for future generations.

With unique scholarly analysis and practical discussion, this book provides a comprehensive introduction to the relationship between environmental protection and human rights being formalized into law in many legal systems. This book instructs on environmental techniques and procedures that assist in the protection of human rights. The text provides cogent guidance on a growing international jurisprudence on the promotion and protection of human rights in relation to the environment that has been developed by international and regional human rights bodies and tribunals. It explores a rich body of case law that continues to develop within states on the environmental dimension of the rights to life, to health, and to public participation and access to information. Five compelling contemporary case studies are included that implicate human rights and the environment, ranging from large dam projects to the creation of a new human right to a clean environment.