Considerations on direct judicial participation in defense of the environment in Brazil, Ecuador and Bolivia

Abstract

In Latin America, the New Democratic Constitutionalism emerges as an alternative to deal with the degradation of the environment through exploratory human action, enabling direct judicial participation in the defense of the right to environmental balance and the adoption, in some states, of a pluralistic view of the Law. with the constitutional recognition of nature with its own legal personality. The objective of the research was to analyze the forms of exercise of popular sovereignty and the one foreseen in the Constitutions of Brazil, Ecuador and Bolivia that allow the exercise of di- rect participative democracy, by the people, with the Judiciary in defense of diffuse environmental interests. The deductive research method and bibliographic research techniques were used. It is concluded that it is possible for a citizen to exercise his political right to supervise the management of public assets, for the benefit of the community, entering into court with an individual procedural instrument of collective interest for the legal protection of the environment; and it was found that the recognition of nature as a collective legal entity of public interest in the Constitutions of Ecuador and Bolivia, enabled the active legitimacy of any person and greater effectiveness in guaranteeing the fundamental right to the environment balanced to all people.