Concept of Environmental Rights

Concept of Environmental Rights

Concept of Environmental Rights

Environmental law

Environmental law is the body of law that seeks to guard or improve the environment. Environmentalism is a broad philosophy and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and betterment of the state of the environment. Environmentalism and environmental concerns are often shown by the colour green.

There is rising evidence of the links between environmental problems and social injustices. Environmental justice is the design that brings both together. It researches the degree of linkages between environmental and social injustice, and asks whether it is possible to tackle both social exclusion and environmental problems through integrated policies and developments. At the same time, there is a new toolkit for governments, individuals and communities to use to implement environmental justice. (Gottlieb, 2005)

How does it work in the UK?

UKELA is the UK's foremost membership organization working to improve understanding and awareness of environmental law, and to make the law work for a better environment. Its members - consisting of lawyers and non-lawyers from across the public, private and voluntary sectors - are involved in the exercise, study and formulation of environmental law across the UK and EU.

In the UK the environment is usually explained to mean air, water and land. The regulatory bodies who are charged with responsibility for guard of the environment are principally the Environment Agency including England and Wales, Scottish Environmental Guard Agency, the Department of the Environment in Northern Ireland and local authorities.

New evaluation techniques, policies, and laws now permit the clearer establishment of rights and responsibilities, and this in turn starts new legal, reputational and financial risks for those acting in an irresponsible way. This briefing brings together the proof on environmental fairness in the UK, and is the first attempt to provide a synthesis of the various factors involved. It is based on proof collected by researchers in the ESRC's Global Environmental Change Programme (GECP) and by civic groups and academics working on poverty, environmental guard and development. The briefing proposes that by seeing social justice issues through an environmental lens and vice versa by analysing environmental issues more clearly in terms of social justice, new and more efficient ways for dealing with each can be developed than if, as is frequently the case at present, each is dealt with independently. The insight that, for instance, more children are killed in road accidents in poor communities than in wealthier ones provides new support for infrastructure investments to change risks in disadvantaged communities such as, for example, dropping speed of drive-through vehicles. Dropping traffic speed in communities will often in turn help the accomplishment of other social and environmental target such as providing safe play areas and reducing emissions and their negative health effects. Environmental justice is not a cure for all social injustices. Environmental and social target can be in conflict. In 1994 the imposition of VAT on fuel - an ostensibly environmental determination - created outrage because of the hardship it would cause, particularly to elderly ...