The Environmental Rights Revolution

Dr. David R. Boyd is one of Canada’s leading experts in environmental law and policy and an adjunct professor in the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University. He has advised the governments of Canada, Sweden, and Iceland on environmental and constitutional issues and is the co-chair of Vancouver’s Greenest City Action Team along with Mayor Gregor Robertson. He is a member of the IUCN’s Commission on Environmental Law, the Global Network for the Study of Human Rights and the Environment, the Forum for Leadership on Water, and the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (ELAW).

David Boyd is the author of several bestselling and award-winning books as well as more than a hundred publications related to environmental law and policy, including Unnatural Law: Rethinking Canadian Environmental Law and Policy. His current research focuses on the effects of enshrining environmental rights and responsibilities in national constitutions.

Boyd’s book forms an indispensable and influential addition to this literature not only due to the strength and comprehensiveness of its comparative legal analysis, but also because of the important empirical questions it seeks to answer as well as raises for future research. Indeed, by conducting the first serious and systematic empirical study of the environmental implications of the right to a healthy environment, Boyd has moved this field beyond the speculative and abstract arguments typical of earlier scholarship...Boyd’s meticulous examination of the legal status of the right to a healthy environment in close to a hundred countries provides powerful evidence of its salience to legal systemsaround the world...The Environmental Rights Revolution forms an important, pioneering effort for understanding the legal influence and broader significance of the right to a healthy environment. As a result, the variety of empirical puzzles and questions that it leaves in its wake should continue to influence research in this field for many years to come.

Louis J Kotzé, Professor, North-West University, South Africa:

What sets this book evidently apart from all the existing publications in the field is its empirical approach…in an earlier endorsement for this book’s marketing, I declared that it ‘breaks new ground in terms of approach, content, scope, and methodology and is well worth a place on the bookshelves of anyone who takes environmental rights and governance seriously’. After this recent reassessment of the book, I can only reiterate these sentiments.

Dr. Stewart Elgie, Professor, University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, and Chair, Sustainable Prosperity:
This book is indispensable for anyone interested in environmental rights. Boyd’s astounding in-depth research spans more than 100 countries, and shows what a powerful tool constitutional rights can be for advancing sustainability -- in courtrooms, legislatures, and broader society.

Professor Tim Hayward, University of Edinburgh, author of Constitutional Environmental Rights:
David R. Boyd’s thorough and carefully presented research provides a clear and detailed account of how environmental rights are being implemented throughout the world. After an initial orientation to the philosophical debates about human rights and the environment, Boyd moves on deftly to investigate which arguments are vindicated in practice. Identifying the evidence available about the practical effectiveness of environmental rights, he provides an invaluable assessment of developments to date as well as a guide to promising future directions of research. This extremely well written book is an essential guide to environmental rights in theory and in practice.

Professors Svitlana Kravchenko and John E. Bonine, University of Oregon, co-authors of Human Rights and the Environment: Cases, Law, and Policy:
Boyd’s is a book we wish we had written. We will turn to it again and again in our own scholarship, teaching, and advice to litigating colleagues. No other study has pulled together so much information on constitutional environmental rights. It will be immensely useful to scholars searching for new material to explore and fruitful directions for future research. Legislators seeking to implement environmental rights can turn to it for guidance. Lawyers searching for court precedents will find a treasure trove of them here. The book moves beyond the tired debates about whether environmental rights should exist by focusing our attention instead on how the diverse legal systems of the world are actually putting these rights into effect. Bravissimo!

Professor Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger, Director of the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law and Affiliated Fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, Cambridge University:
Boyd’s book is ambitious in scope, innovative in approach, persuasive in its arguments, and inspiring in its conclusions. The Environmental Rights Revolution is an impressive piece of comparative legal scholarship with practical implications for society’s ongoing quest for a sustainable future.

Dr. Rafael González Ballar, Faculty of Law, University of Costa Rica:
A valuable study on the environmental rights revolution. The evidence presented in this book helps understand the powerful influence of the right to a healthy environment in promoting strong environmental legislation, public policies, and court decisions across the world. This is the most complete research available for professors, judges, practitioners, and students interested in the origins, consequences, and future of the most important legal revolution for the survival of humanity.

Louis J. Kotzé, Professor of Law, North West University, South Africa:
While the environmental rights theme is well-trodden scholarly ground, David Boyd eloquently frees this enquiry from the restrictive theoretical confines of the ivory tower by investigating the actual impact that rights have on environmental governance. This has not been done before in such a comprehensive, critical, and thorough manner. This work breaks new ground in terms of approach, content, scope, and methodology and is well worth a place on the bookshelves of anyone who takes environmental rights and governance seriously.

Lynda M. Collins, Centre for Environmental Law & Global Sustainability, University of Ottawa:
This book is a must read for scholars, jurists, and advocates of environmental law. Professor Boyd has single-handedly brought the field of environmental human rights into the twenty-first century.