Professors:
- Astrid Puentes Riaño, Expert consultant in environment, human rights and climate change.
- Marcos Orellana, Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights.
Course Description:
The intersection of human rights and the environment is a topical and fast evolving field, and an important framework for legal advocacy, education, activism and corporate responsibility. Human rights and environment are separate, but closely linked fields as a matter of substantive rights, a healthy environment and as Second, as a matter a procedural right, which provide the means for the guarantee of environmental rights. These categories of rights combined in environmental rights, recognize the inextricable nature of both the protection of, and harm to, human beings, communities, and the planet. Despite environmental rights having grown more rapidly than any other human right, almost 50 years of the ground-breaking collective recognition of the right to a healthy environment environmental conditions are far from exemplary and weekly many lives are threatened and lost protecting these rights. This course will examine trends, legal issues; and practical application through the examination of global legal developments and practice within various jurisdictions and mechanisms. In particular, the seminar will explore the challenges in integration of environmental considerations into economic processes and the ways in which corporate activities are often connected to environmental rights abuses. Students will examine the linkages between the two fields and emerge from this course with a coherent global perspective of trends and strategies.