As the human right to a healthy environment is codified around the globe, some systems still lag behind. One noticeable straggler is the Council of Europe, which is currently undergoing its fourth attempt to recognize the right. This article examines the proposals tabled within this system in light of overarching debates about climate justice and environmental rights, before focusing specifically on the spatial and temporal limits of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the institutional features of its Court. First, the article describes what the author sees as the current liminal moment in the development of human rights law, a time of transition in which established legal concepts can be questioned or reaffirmed. Second, it sketches recent proposals for locating and conceptualizing the right to a healthy environment within the Council of Europe. Evaluating different options, it makes the case for including this right in the ECHR. Third, the article discusses the right's potential to reshape the spatial and temporal limitations on legal subjectivity and Convention protections. These proposals come at a crucial time when the system's ability to protect human rights from environment-related impacts is being tested by climate litigation. The article understands these developments as interrelated and discusses whether current proposals could deliver on demands for climate justice by extending protection to future generations and for extraterritorial environmental impacts.

This article examines whether mass deforestation could be prosecuted as a crime against humanity under Article 7 of the Rome Statute. It does so in respect of the situation in the Brazilian Legal Amazon in 2019–2021, where the unbridled exploitation and destruction of the rainforest had a disastrous impact at local, regional and global levels. The article covers three main aspects. First, it explores the existing limits of international criminal law for prosecuting mass deforestation as a crime against humanity, and the contours within which criminalization would be possible. Secondly, it discusses the challenges inherent in the anthropocentric nature of the chapeau requirement of Article 7 for the criminalization of mass deforestation under that provision. Thirdly, it analyses the extent to which mass deforestation could qualify as persecution and/or an ‘other inhumane act’ under Articles 7(1)(h) and (k) of the Rome Statute.

The health of the planet and its life forms are under threat from anthropogenic climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss, and the extreme weather events, heatwaves and wildfires that accompany them. The burgeoning field of planetary health studies the interplay between humanity and the Earth's biosphere and ecosystems on which human health depends. Scholarship on law from a planetary health vantage point remains scarce. This article fills this gap by delineating the conceptual building blocks of a planetary health law, which, in its latent form, is dispersed across various hard and soft sources of international environmental law and global health law that converge on the right to a healthy environment, and, to a lesser extent, rights of nature emerging in various domestic jurisdictions. It elucidates how the fragmented regimes of international environmental and global health law could be developed in more coherent ways, driven by an overarching concern for the integrity of the planetary foundations of life.

The article explores the interpretation of the right to a healthy environment by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights as an autonomous right under the American Convention on Human Rights. It places this development in the context of transformative constitutionalism in Latin America and examines it against the background of the Court's broader case law. The article argues that, even though this is an important judicial innovation, there are three challenges with the approach of the Court. The first relates to the individual and collective dimensions of the right; the second to the link between this development and the Court's previous jurisprudence; and the third to the corresponding reparations. The last part of the article seeks to explore ways in which the Court could offer further guidance on the contours of the right and its relationship with civil and political rights.

Potential harm to human rights and the environment, including by corporate actors, is amplified in situations of conflict. This article focuses on applying the right to a healthy environment in relation to armed conflicts and corporate responsibility. In particular, it analyzes and compares due diligence requirements in the European Union Conflict Minerals Regulation and the International Law Commission's Draft Principles on Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts and examines how these align with the right to a healthy environment.

This article focuses on the correlation between the secondary objectives of the European Central Bank (ECB) and the right to a healthy environment. Whereas the primary mandate of the ECB is maintaining price stability, the applicable law also envisages secondary objectives, such as supporting economic growth and sustainable development. Crucially, however, there is an emerging scientific literature suggesting a trade-off between economic growth and environmental sustainability. This results in a balancing problem: To what extent environmental protection and sustainability can be balanced with economic growth within the ECB’s monetary policy? This article aims to analyse this issue with a specific focus on legal implications in terms of the right to a healthy environment. This study reveals the failure of the member states to comply with the international obligations under the right to a healthy environment in shaping the law of the ECB.

On February 6, 2020, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Court) declared in Lhaka Honhat Association v. Argentina that Argentina violated Indigenous groups’ rights to communal property, a healthy environment, cultural identity, food, and water. For the first time in a contentious case, the Court analyzed these rights autonomously based on Article 26 of the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR) and ordered specific restitution measures, including actions to provide access to adequate food and water, and the recovery of forest resources and Indigenous culture. The decision marks a significant milestone for protecting Indigenous peoples’ rights and expanding the autonomous rights to a healthy environment, water, and food, which are now directly justiciable under the Inter-American human rights system.