Human Dignity and the Adjudication of Environmental Rights

Focusing on contemporary debates in philosophy and legal theory, this ground-breaking book provides a compelling enquiry into the nature of human dignity.

The author not only illustrates that dignity is a concept that can extend our understanding of our environmental impacts and duties, but also highlights how our reliance on and relatedness to the environment further extends and enhances our understanding of dignity itself. Against the background of current global threats to the realisation of rights, including severe environmental degradation and depleted reserves of essential natural resources, this innovative book considers whether dignity has any role to play in addressing these new problems, as well as in securing environmental rights and greater environmental care.

The author provides an astute examination of important developments in human and environmental rights across a range of jurisdictions and levels, and considers whether human dignity should play a more central role in judicial considerations regarding environmental rights and environmental threats to human rights. Eminently engaging, this forward-thinking book will prove a critical read for legal academics and scholars with an interest in human dignity and environmental rights, as well as judicial reasoning and legal philosophy more widely.

Its practical presentation of recent developments will also be of great importance to practitioners and policy-makers working in human rights and environmental law.