Good Practices and Developments at Constitutional Level, and Current Challenges in the Legal Order

Good Practices and Developments at Constitutional Level, and Current Challenges in the Legal Order Presented by: Prof. Dr. Bándi Date: 24 November 2022 The Human Right To A Clean, Healthy And Sustainable Environment - UN GA A/76/L.75, 26 July 2022 • 1. Recognizes the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a human right; • 2. Notes that the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is related to other rights and existing international law; - Affirming the importance of a clean, healthy and sustainable environment for the enjoyment of all human rights, - Recognizing further that environmental degradation, climate change, biodiversity loss, desertification and unsustainable development constitute some of the most pressing and serious threats to the ability of present and future generations to effectively enjoy all human rights, - 8th EAP, Art 3: (p) advancing towards the recognition of a right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment internationally; Clean - What clean means exactly? - Who will measure, cleanness'? - What is the treshold? - Very flexible and indefinite term • Recognizing that sustainable development, in its three dimensions (social, economic and environmental), and the protection of the environment, including ecosystems, contribute to and promote human well-being and the full enjoyment of all human rights, for present and future generations, • Recognizing also that, conversely, the impact of climate change, the unsustainable management and use of natural resources, the pollution of air, land and water, the unsound management of chemicals and waste, the resulting loss of biodiversity and the decline in services provided by ecosystems interfere with the enjoyment of a clean, healthy and sustainable environment and environmental damage has negative implications, both direct and indirect effective enjoyment of all human rights, Healthy - Healthy for who? Human beings? Mammals? Flora and Fauna? - Healthy environment? - If humans: physical, mental, moral? - Ecological? - Again: threshold? - How to measure? Sustainable - Intergenerational equity - + intragenerational - equity - X - integration Still It Is A Huge Step Forward - A message, a gesture (although much later than expected) - Revitalizing the already existing concept - Call for the international, national and local communities to act (4. Calls upon States, international organizations, business enterprises and other relevant stakeholders to adopt policies, to enhance international cooperation, strengthen capacity-building and continue to share good practices in order to scale up efforts to ensure a clean, healthy and sustainable environment for all.) - This Call to Action (UN SG 2020) sets out some overarching guiding principles and identifies seven such domains: • (1) rights at the core of sustainable development; • (2) rights in times of crisis; • (3) gender equality and equal rights for women; • (4) public participation and civic space; • (5) rights of future generations, especially climate justice; • (6) rights at the heart of collective action; and • (7) new frontiers of human rights (digital age). Crisis - peace (right to a safe environment) - Message Of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace, 1 January 2010 (If You Want to Cultivate Peace, Protect Creation): • Protecting the natural environment in order to build a world of peace is thus a duty incumbent upon each and all. It is an urgent challenge, one to be faced with renewed and concerted commitment; it is also a providential opportunity to hand down to coming generations the prospect of a better future for all. May this be clear to world leaders and to those at every level who are concerned for the future of humanity: the protection of creation and peacemaking are profoundly linked! - War and environment - Economic (energy) crisis and environment - Reevaluation of priorities might lead to deterioration of the environment Long Term And Comprehensive Thinking - The real need • The greatest challenge is the political environment • Decision 28/2017. (Χ. 25.) AB - Natura 2000: 'the legislator shall decide along the lines of a long-term thinking, make deliberations across government cycles' (Reasoning [34]). • Decision 13/2018. (IX. 4.) AB: [40] ... the medium and long term planning and the predictable legislation are such professional starting points, which, from the point of view if precaution and prevention are extremely important from the point of view of items, belonging to the common heritage of the nation, specified in Par. 1 of Art P)." - On the contrary • The crisis situation is generally speaking a, perfect' excuse • There are specific investments everywhere, which try to exempt the investment as much as possible from the environmental constraints • III-considered, ad-hoc decisions (solar panel, wind-energy, firewood logging in Hungary) Beyond GDP - 8th EAP: Decision 2022/591 of 6 April 2022 on a General Union Environment Action Program to 2030 • (19)... To ensure that transition, it will be necessary for the Union to develop a more holistic approach to policymaking through, inter alia, the use of a summary dashboard that measures economic, social and environmental progress 'beyond GDP'. A summary indicator set, as part of the Union's efforts to implement the UN 2030 Agenda, would summarise the existing indicator and monitoring processes, whilst also providing information on distance to target, where possible, and ultimately serving as a political summary to guide policymaking. The development of such an indicator set is therefore included as an enabling condition in the 8th EAP. • Art. 3. (e) developing a summary dashboard and indicator set measuring 'beyond GDP', based on, inter alia, a targeted consultation with all relevant stakeholders as well as a report which identifies the interlinkages between existing indicator sets, monitoring frameworks and processes at Union level measuring social, economic and environmental progress and which proposes action on how existing dashboards and indicator sets can be streamlined; - Human Development Index (HDI): created by the United Nations, is now the most used progress - indicator for developing economies. It is a geometric means of normalized indices across three dimensions life expectancy, average years of schooling and gross national income per capita - that recognizes people and their capabilities in assessing a country's development. - Happy Planet Index (HPI): developed by the UK's New Economic Foundation, combines four elements - life expectancy, wellbeing, ecological footprint and inequality to show how efficiently people in different countries are using environmental resources to lead long, happy lives. Ecosystem services - 8th EAP, Art 3. • (q) making full use of ecosystem approaches and green infrastructure, including biodiversity-friendly nature based solutions, whilst also ensuring that their implementation restores biodiversity and enhances ecosystem integrity and connectivity, has clear societal co-benefits, requiring full engagement with, and consent of, indigenous peoples and local communities, and does not replace or undermine measures taken to protect biodiversity or reduce greenhouse gas emissions within the Union; - EU Biodiversity Strategy 2020 • 3.3.3. Measuring and integrating the value of nature • Biodiversity considerations need to be better integrated into public and business decision-making at all levels. Building on existing work, the Commission will develop in 2021 methods, criteria and standards to describe the essential features of biodiversity, its services, values, and sustainable use. Resilience - Meadows (2010): „In my opinion this (sustainable development - the authors) is an oxymoron, a term with nonsense meaning. To many people, "development" seems to imply that we can simply keep going as we have for the last 100 years, depleting resources on a large scale and polluting heavily. And adding some kind of "sustainability" makes the detrimental effects of our model of development go away. I am more interested in the term "resilience." This concept is about how to structure a company or a city or a country so that it can continue to function quite well even in the face of major shocks. Implementing policies that give you resilience tends to make the system more sustainable." - The best and easiest synopsis would be to state in summary, that the essence of resilience is the ability to adapt ourselves to different crisis situations, or the ability to react in a flexible way. Major legal elements of resilience - Integration - Subsidiarity - Precaution - Cooperation (polycentric and multimodal) and consultation - Planning and revision of plans - Human rights - Public participation, civil involvement, transparency - Decentralization and deconcentrating - Incentives and voluntary instruments - Constant monitoring and the revision of decisions