Linking environmental protection, health, and human rights in the European Union: An argument in favour of environmental justice policy

Alexios Antypas*, Claude Cahn, Richard Filcak, Tamara Steger

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

The European Union (EU) has confined its moves and plans on the front of human rights law and environmental regulation to the matter of securing standing for individuals and civil society organizations in environmental proceedings in the context of environmental protection, health and human rights although a basis exists to extend anti-discrimination law to environmental areas to date. As such, there has been a recent inquiry about the fact that environmental damage in Europe are very frequently clustered in poor and minority or other marginalized communities. The EU also faces the challenge of making a law and policy relate to the problem of race-based or class-based environmental harms. So far, environmental regulation and human rights law institutions in Europe have not yet managed to tackle the issues head on. Nevertheless, there are actions that can be done, such as the establishment of a working group on environmental justice and task it to produce a white paper on environmental racism/environmental justice matters in Europe, and amending the 6th Environmental Action Program to make explicit reference to environmental justice and set environmental justice policy objectives, among others.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)8-21
Number of pages14
JournalEnvironmental Law and Management
Volume20
Issue number1
StatePublished - Jan 2008

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