The Right to a Healthy Environment – between a Basic Human Right and a Policy of Form without Substance
The Right to a Healthy Environment – between a Basic Human Right and a Policy of Form without Substance

Summary/Abstract: There’s no denial that in the last decades environmental concerns experienced a great development, both in highly-developed countries and countries emerging from communism era. The large range of legal instruments at national, European and international level, specialized organs and regional or global agencies that enforces the environmental legislation and activates to protect the environment and our right to a healthy environment is a solid proof for those concerns. The base of environmental protection is the human right to a healthy environment. It is found in many international declarations and treaties regarding environmental protection, as well as national legislation, recognized even by the national constitutions. But this right was often criticized, much of the economic powers of the world refuse to recognize it, it is neither found in the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and in many cases the national courts had problems in the application of specific legislation. Given this difference between desiderate and reality, we can ask ourselves why the human right to a healthy environment is often only a declaration of intent without substance and has not found place as a fundamental human right, although it is recognized as such. This analysis should be done in a complex way, beyond the legal text by giving considerations of many social, political and economic factors.

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