Preservation of the Environment

Introduction The protection and preservation of the environment is one of the most important issues facing humankind today. The centrality of this issue was demonstrated when the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 was awarded to AL Gore and the Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change. There is an international movement today, cutting across the north-south divide, to protect and preserve the environment. International law forms a major part of this development. Within this body of international law, dealing with protection of the environment, there exists a current of thought which argues that right to a clean or healthy or satisfactory or good environment has attained the status of a human right. The logical corollary follows that human rights mechanism can be used to prevent the degradation of the environment. The central theme of this Paper is to answer whether there exists a human right to environment in the international arena and in India.