1 - Narratives of Environmental and Human Rights Protection

Summary

Environmental and human rights law emerged as autonomous and disconnected bodies of law with distinct normative underpinnings. Yet, these progressively evolved towards increasing normative interconnections and legal integration. This chapter historicises this evolution by retracing how concerns for environmental protection were legally framed in early environmental instruments and to what end. It then shows how these representations of environmental protection changed over time once they started being articulated in relation to human rights considerations. The analysis draws on early legislative instruments in environmental and human rights law and retrieves the competing rationales at stake in their negotiations, the diplomatic tensions that underpinned their adoptions, and the political and epistemic compromises that were struck to accommodate divergent views over environmental protection and socio-economic development embedded in broader post-colonial debates. The mainstream narrative of environmental protection as translated in modern environmental law is then problematised by demonstrating how specific concerns were accommodated while others were silenced, discarded or neglected. A dominant anthropocentric and synergistic frame emerged, which defines environmental protection as inherently beneficial to human rights. This led to a narrow focus on synergies between environmental and human rights protection, with scant attention paid to conflicts and trade-offs, as the chapter demonstrates.