The human right to a healthy environment, public participation and IUS commune

Abstract

The human right to a healthy environment or the human right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment is linked to the right to access to environmental participation. Public participation is a mean to exercise the human right to a healthy environment as well as part of its normative content. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights case law has developed environmental participation criteria. Thus, the Court has built up minimum standards which make part of a ius commune on human rights in Latin America. This paper seeks to define the role and relevance of the norms of public participation in the environmental protection. Thus the guiding question is: which role does public participation play in environmental protection and what are the legal sources. Dogmatic analysis is the method used in this paper. The full enjoyment of environmental consultation, participation and consent rights, are requirements for the fulfilment of a real, participative and deliberative democracy. International human rights law has developed participatory minimum standards that are supposed to be shared amongst States.