The Position of the Right to a Healthy Environment in the Human Rights System: Classical Rights Theory and Debates on Rights Inflation

Abstract

This research critically examines the place of the right to a healthy environment within the human rights system in the context of classical rights theory criteria and the debate on rights inflation. Over the last fifty years, the right to a healthy environment has become increasingly prominent in constitutional arrangements, international texts, and court decisions, particularly under the heading of third-generation “solidarity rights.” Significant conceptual ambiguities exist in the literature regarding the extent to which the right to a healthy environment aligns with the classical subjective rights model. This article evaluates the right to a healthy environment based on four criteria: the identifiability of the right holder, the determinability of those obligated, the clarity of the nature of the right, and its applicability in the judicial process. By examining climate cases such as Urgenda, Neubauer, and KlimaSeniorinnen, it is shown that courts often provide environmental protection by broadly interpreting existing fundamental rights from an environmental perspective, rather than establishing an independent right to a healthy environment. The study argues that the right to a healthy environment should be understood more meaningfully within a multi-layered framework encompassing a constitutional principle, procedural environmental safeguards, and environmental interpretations of existing rights, rather than as a directly claimable subjective right