THE RIGHT TO A BALANCED AND HEALTHFUL ECOLOGY IN THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK OF THE EUROPEAN CONVENTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND CASE LAW OF THE ECtHR

Objective:The author seeks to understand the content and legal guarantees of the right to sustainable, healthy and favorable environment in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. The researcher seeks to list the case law of the ECtHR corresponding to environmental issues in order to define concrete aspects related to responsibility of the States for the climate change and global warming. The author analyzes new legal trends on the protection of the rights of individuals and groups to complain for violations of their rights to a healthy and favorable environment in the light of the European Convention on Human Rights. The article is focused on positive state obligations on a healthy and sustainable environment under the Convention provisions, Russian experience in eco-cases, admissibility criteria for complaints to the European Court of Human Rights in “environmental cases”. The writer gives an overview of the ECtHR’s legal positions on the right to a healthy and favorable (i.e. prosperous, clean, safe, quiet, calm, quality) environment by type of its pollution. The author considers the importance of facilitating the right to healthy environment according to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.Methodology: The research uses general scientific and special cognitive techniques wherein legal analysis and synthesis, systemic, formal-legal, comparative-legal, historical-legal and dialectical methods are applied. The author applied a case study method to select the most recent and pilot cases of the ECtHR practice.Results: The author founds out that despite the fact of a non-exhaustive list of the legal positions of the ECtHR concerning the environment effect on human life and health, there is a certain trend in Council of Europe towards an extended interpretation of the human right to healthy ecological situation responding to new challenges to the realization that right, such as, the decarbonization of industrial processes, right to light, right to fresh air, clean water and clean atmosphere, etc. The study concludes with an idea that right to sustainable, healthy and favorable right is a collective right. From the practical perspective, potentially group of individuals should complain to the international judicial institutions to the violation of this right. The importance of the protection of that right is increasing within the technological progress. The right to healthy environment imposes to the European States a legal obligation to ensure right to life, prohibition of torture, right to privacy, right to a fair trial, right to an effective remedy and prohibition of discrimination. The researcher also point out that cases of environmental rights violations are complicated in terms of preparing a complaint and processing by the ECtHR. Due to this fact, it is hard to do so with regard to the causal link between the acts (omission) of state agencies, the violation of environmental rights and the consequences that occurred. It is not clear from the text of the Convention which article directly should be applied.Contributions: Following a review of the content, the author raised possible problems, strategies, suggestions and guidelines for the protection of the right to sustainable and healthy environment. The author concluded that near future new categories of legal cases related to the state responsibility for global warming and climate change will appear in international and national judicial system. The author encourages the complement to the international legal regulation of the protection of the right to healthy, sustainable and favorable ecology on universal and regional level.

The environment has rights: Eco-spiritual social work through ubuntu philosophy and Pachamama: A commentary

Ubuntu has launched the Global Agenda for Social Work and Social Development, 2020–2030. This commentary stipulates how ubuntu can reinforce the Pachamama rights and its significance to social work practice. The African philosophy of ubuntu has potential to enhance the framework of understanding environmental rights from an eco-spiritual social work perspective and integrating the concepts of Pachamama rights. Clearly showing the link between Pachamama and ubuntu, this paper reminds social workers to advance the Rights of Nature.

When the blessing resource ‘oil’ curses

Oil industry has impacted both economy and ecology of oil-producing states in the Niger Delta region in Nigeria. The environmental detriments caused by gas flaring and oil spills develop violent ethnic agitations, through long lasting history area of conflicts, for economic, social, political, and environmental rights. This paper examines the history of oil and gas exploitation, in Niger Delta region, and its role to cause environmental degradations in the region. The study argued that multinational oil corporations’ activities were the first intriguing violence in local communities based on environmental approach. Also, the paper indicates that the conflict had many drivers related to different components of indigenous people. The tendency of violence escalated over time, in strength of acts from demonstrations and grievances to militant operations, and demands from self determination to justice, revenues equity and environmental rights, in order to reshape oil-bearing communities’ old motivations about self-governance.

Increasing resource efficiency in the industrial complex ensuring environmental human rights

The close relationship between industrial development and environmental pollution is considered the main problem of negative climate changes and the deterioration of life quality leading to an increase in mortality. In this regard, the protection of environmental human rights is of great importance. The paper aims to assess the trends of industrial influence on the human environment and the level of protection of environmental human rights in different countries through reviewing and analysis of the set of relevant studies. The paper brings novelty exploring an array of objectives for protecting human environmental rights in the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals, implementation of a circular and resource-efficient economy, together with the Industry 4.0 technologies for industrialized countries, including Ukraine. Most studies consider contradictions between the economic and environmental goals of both businesses and the state the main obstacle for the ecologization of industrial production. The economic feasibility of introducing more resource-efficient business models has been proved. The impact of Ukrainian industrial companies on the environment and the state of human environmental rights protection is studied. The results of the study allow stating that the resource and energy inefficiency of industrial technology in the country, as well as the weakness of state institutions in the implementation of reforms for sustainable development, is a fundamental threat to human rights and a healthy life.

National development strategies in terms of ensuring environmental rights and interests: Comparative approach

The study is devoted to scientific and theoretical analysis of the principles of state activity in the development of national policy in the context of ensuring human’s environmental rights and interests, the creation of effective legal mechanisms for their guarantee, exercise, and protection, solving systemic issues in this area. The purpose of the study is a comprehensive examination and analysis of legislation from the standpoint of greening national and foreign policy, national development strategies. The methodological basis of the study is a set of general philosophical, general scientific, special scientific, and legal methods. It is proposed to consider greening as a multifaceted phenomenon. In general, the state environmental policy is a component of state policy, which fixes its strategic goals and objectives, defined for the future, considering environmental factors. It is proved that at the legislative level there should be clear mechanisms for the legal support of integration of environmental policy into sectoral, national, and regional strategies, local action plans, and interaction with civil society institutions, the scientific community. It is argued that modern state environmental policy and further systematisation of environmental legislation should be based on the provisions of environmental law doctrine to consider modern approaches to environmental regulation, integration of environmental requirements and regulations to state planning, sectoral, regional, and local development. Based on conducted research and synthesis, proposals and recommendations for the development of a unified concept of legal policy, in particular, environmental legal policy as its component, also, for the improvement of national regulatory framework (namely by adopting the Concept of systematisation of environmental legislation and modernisation of the contemporary strategy of state environmental policy) are elaborated

Green Criminology–Law Interdisciplinarity Towards Multispecies Justice: The Case of Wildlife Trafficking in Vietnam

Green criminology provides a significant opportunity for interdisciplinary engagement to address the many environmental problems of the twenty-first century that are too complex to be solved through a single disciplinary lens. Hall (2014) has called for increased collaboration between green criminologists and legal scholars while also acknowledging that this form of interdisciplinarity is more challenging than for more traditional forms of criminology. This paper adopts Hall’s call as a starting point for a critical exploration of two areas that offer ground for collaboration: positioning analyses of environmental harm within wider regulatory frameworks and considering the ways human and non-human victims interact with ‘the mechanisms of justice’ to exercise ‘environmental rights’ (Hall 2014: 105). We examine these areas drawing on the case of wildlife trafficking in Vietnam. We argue that ‘multispecies justice’ presents a useful framework to progress green criminology–law collaborations in the Vietnamese and other contexts.

The importance of people's control in the implementation of environmental rights: theoretical and legal aspect

The problem of people's control, the importance of which is indisputable for the implementation of environmental rights in the state, is one of the most complex, significant and fundamental issues in the theory of state and law. Theoretical understanding and development of practical recommendations for solving this problem is a necessary condition for effective scientific management of social processes. Discovering the essence of the concept of "people's control" as a fundamentally new legal category for domestic science, as well as solving a number of other problems of theory and practice of such control requires a thorough study of its formation as a separate independent legal institution and approval and improvement of its forms. It should be noted that the control of the people is one of the types of public control, which consists in monitoring citizens over the activities of public authorities, their officials, as well as analysis and verification of these activities, aimed at preventing, detecting and stopping actions that cause violations and legitimate human interests, including environmental. In addition, control is an important factor in the formation of civil society and the element that ensures the relationship between government and the people, which in turn is a necessary condition for building a democratic and legal state. Thus, it can be noted that all the mentioned authors consider only certain areas of people's control, bypassing such an important factor as recognizing it as a separate independent legal institution that has an important impact on the implementation of rights, including environmental. The actualization of this provision is especially intensified in view of the fact that the process of institutionalization of civil society is underway in Ukraine, and the turbulent events of political life give it certain impulses. Thus, the importance of people's control in various spheres of state and public activity, including environmental, is not in doubt, and its level corresponds to the development of democracy, civil society institutions, their impact on public authorities. Public control is designed to increase the responsibility of the state to citizens for its decisions and for the achievement of state obligations, as well as to ensure the proper exercise of rights and freedoms, including environmental.