The chapter introduces the doctrinal data analysis to explore the compatibility of the ECHR with the specific risk principle of the environmental minimum. The specific risk principle is the trigger of the environmental minimum framework, determining whether the minimum standards of review apply to a given environmental harm. The principle requires that an environmental harm is successfully linked to a threat to a specific human right recognised under the invoked protection regime. Compatibility with the ECHR can be determined through the extent the doctrine of the Court subscribes to two key claims: (1) in principle, any environmental harm can give rise to infringements of Convention rights; and (2) environmental harm has been successfully linked to the Convention rights and led to findings of violations in the past. The chapter concludes that, notwithstanding some inconsistencies in earlier cases, the prevailing ECHR doctrine is compatible with the environmental minimum to a significant extent.

The chapter introduces and defends the environmental minimum as a framework for the protections (and correlative duties) that environmental human rights require. It develops the guiding principles of the framework, modelled on the characteristics of human rights identified by James Nickel and as specified through the lens of environmental protection following Joseph Raz's interest theory of rights. The core prinicples of the environmental minimum that allow courts to make sense of environmental harm in the context of human rights protection regimes are: the specific risk principle, which acts as the trigger for the environmental minimum, requiring a specific risk to a recognised right arising from environmental harm; the minimum standards, which specify the baseline standard of review that courts ought to employ and are based on domestic and international legal norms, as well as established and emerging evidence that is generally accepted in the relevant scientific community; and finally the high priority characteristic, which guides the balancing of environmental protection with competing interests based on human rights.