Often referred to as part of the third generation of human rights, the concept of environmental rights is unclear in meaning and content. Environmental rights are elusive because there is no universal definition, and they are controversial because they hybridize the ecocentric perspectives of environmentalists and the anthropocentric perspectives dominant among human rights activists (Apple 2004). No binding international agreement has had environmental rights as its primary focus because such rights fail to fit neatly into either of these two groups. This fact combined with the scarcity of binding international legal instruments has prevented environmental rights from becoming international law. Nonetheless progress on defining and enforcing environmental rights continues on the international, regional, and national levels.

Background

Throughout the late-1950s and early-1960s serious environmental disasters occurred in various regions of the world: oil spills at sea (for example, the tanker Torrey Canyon in the English...