Will Ireland Constitutionalise Environmental Human Rights and the Rights of Nature as a Response to the Biodiversity Crisis?
Earlier this year, a Citizens’ Assembly in Ireland tasked with examining biodiversity loss made a number of far-reaching constitutional amendment recommendations. The Assembly’s Report proposed that a referendum be held...
Ecocentrism and the Right to a Healthy Environment: To What Extent Can Human Rights Protect Non-Human Life?
In 2022, the United Nations General Assembly recognized the human right to a ‘clean, healthy, and sustainable environment’. Before the General Assembly resolution expressly recognized this right, other sources of...
India’s Forest (Conservation) Amendment Bill: Undermining Forest Dwellers’ Rights
On 30 March 2023, the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Bill, 2023 was introduced in the Lok Sabha, India’s lower house of Parliament, and later referred to a Joint Committee of Parliament...
Kabwe mine: taking rights seriously in a toxic city
Mining activities in Zambia, while economically beneficial (accounting for roughly 70 per cent of GDP), have produced negative effects, not least pollution to the environment. The scale of industrial pollution...
Irish Supreme Court quashes climate mitigation plan: environmental rights caught between redundancy and vagueness
On 31 July 2020, the Irish Supreme Court annulled the government’s climate mitigation plan. A grand chamber of – exceptionally – seven judges ruled unanimously that the plan did not...
