A healthy environment for human rights: An overview of international jurisprudence

This paper provides a background to ongoing work that adopts a multidisciplinary approach to finding solutions to critical global challenges, including climate change, conflict, and the protection of human rights in changing societies. This paper examines four key areas where environmental protection is central to the protection of fundamental human rights. These are environmental pollution, rights of Indigenous peoples, climate change, and international trade and investment. It provides an analysis of international jurisprudence from human rights courts and tribunals, in order to provide an overview of how well (or not) international courts have understood and protected the complex relationships between human rights and the environment in different contexts. It concludes with a general proposal for future research to improve the capacity of domestic and international courts in dealing with climate-change related human rights litigation, which is the subject of ongoing research in the Asia-Pacific region in particular