The right to a healthy environment,a social environmental justice approach

Abstract: The right to a healthy environment gained recognition in many constitutions around the globe. Such legal recognition has been regarded as transformative in terms of better environmental regulations. To understand how this right has been realized by citizens through their national courts, from the social environmental justice perspective is the aim of this thesis. The implications of the exercise of this right on the role of the Executive will likewise be examined. The thesis adopts the case study method to ascertain how national courts in selected jurisdictions interpreted the constitutional right to a healthy environment. In almost all the cases examined, the national courts exemplified a judicial activism in giving meaning and vision for the enforcement of the right. The judicial authorities properly delineated the constitutional duty of the other branches of the government to fulfill the right to a healthy environment. The philosophy behind the national courts' rulings reflected and applied notions of social environmental justice, in a way that merited the claimants' plea to live in a healthy environment. In this sense, the rulings encapsulated the vision of social environmental justice that social justice and environmental justice are mutually supportive and integral to serving the ends of justice in an environmental context.