3 - The ECHR, Environment-Based Human Rights Claims and the Search for Standards

Summary

This chapter investigates the challenge of addressing environment-centred concerns under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), a regime that offers no specific coverage for environmental matters. In spite of this, the ECHR’s adjudicatory machinery has proved willing and able to engage with environment-based claims and continues to accommodate a steady and ongoing flow of such applications in a plethora of case law. However, lack of treaty coverage poses certain challenges, not least of which is the associated absence of standards whereby to evaluate and dispose of environment-based claims. The chapter considers how the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has developed its jurisprudence to fill this lacuna, looking first at the basic standard required in setting a threshold to establish its jurisdiction and going on to look at development of standards to evaluate signatory states’ behaviour. In the latter context, questions arise as to both content and legitimacy. To this end the Court has deployed standards drawn from a range of ‘proxies’ sourced from a range of domestic and international (including EU) law and policy, to supply this deficit in the regime texts. The chapter concludes by briefly discussing the possibilities for future development in this area.