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...
Serendipitous Sustainability: How Karnataka’s ‘Gruha Jyothi’ and ‘Shakti’ Schemes Can Bolster Climate Action
India, with its growing population and energy demands, faces a multifaceted challenge in balancing its commitment towards economic development with environmental sustainability. However, sometimes the governmental policies primarily designed for...
The Menace of Manual Scavenging in India: The Case for Stronger Legal Implementation
The right to a clean, safe, and healthy environment is a fundamental right protected by Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, encompassed by the right to life. However, sanitation employees...
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...
Lessons from the French Vigilance Law for the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive
On 23rd February 2022, the European Commission published a draft Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (‘the Draft Directive’) that will mandate companies operating within the European Union (‘EU’) above a...
The UK Bill of Rights: Changes to Human Rights Protection may Impact Climate Litigation
Across the world, human rights-based arguments are increasingly deployed in climate litigation against public bodies. However, in the UK, potential reforms to the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) – an...
What’s next in Climate Litigation before the European Court of Human Rights? Duarte Agostinho and Others v Portugal and 32 other States
On 29 March 2023, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) heard its first two climate cases (Verein Klima Seniorinnen and Others v Switzerland and Carême v France). Meanwhile, another...
Houses Without Land: The Strange Property Rights Phenomenon in the Kenyan Coastal Region and its Effect on coastal communities’ right to housing
The common law maxim cujus est solem ejus et usque ad coelum et ad inferos affirms that whoever owns a piece of land owns it all the way up to...
The Paris Agreement as a Human Rights Treaty: PSB et al. v Brazil
Image description: Satellite image of Brazil during natural disaster crisis in 2020 In late October, Brazil ousted incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro and elected Lula, who has since promised to cut...
Another ‘Green Reading’ of Article 8 of the ECHR in Pavlov & Others v Russia
Image description: Large industrial mining vehicle pictured in crater of quarry in Russia The recent case Pavlov & Others v Russia saw the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), once...
Appraising the Limitations of Linking Climate Reparations to Human Rights
Image Description: devastating climate-induced flooding in Pakistan Pakistan’s climate change minister Sherry Rehman recently lamented the near absence of any “reparations” for climate change given by developed States to the...
