The Human Rights-Based Constitutionalization of Global Environmental Protection: A Framework for Action and Understanding

Abstract The underlying premise of a global constitutional order is dictated by the singular, unitary nature of the environment, a deeply interdependent whole. This premise aside, international environmental law, as we know it today, is far from constituting an international constitutional order. Rather, it presents a broad set of principles and mixed legal and political commitments of states dispersed in a myriad of international instruments possessing varying degrees of formality, legal status, scope of regulation, and effect. Its unparalleled dispersion, organizational and regulatory flexibility, and overall indeterminate features of normative content and procedure are neither improbable nor inconceivable for a relatively new genre of international legal regulation, namely the environment. Simply put, a consolidated international legal order as it ordinarily exists in other arenas is missing in the case of the environment. In shaping its contents and effects, a new institutional ally is found in national and regional judicial bodies, which instead rely on human rights to ground their decisions in pursuit of climate goals and aspirations. The ensuing result is that framing the order that will govern the global environmental change, resort must be made to the models already fashioned by the practice of national and regional systems. Ultimately, this article proposes the principal parameters of a constitutional order for the environment.