Human Rights & the Environment

Human Rights & the Environment - Professor Chris Wold

• Course Number: LAW-587
• Course Type: Highly Specialized
• Credits: 2
• Enrollment Limit: Determined by the Registrar
• Description: The two-credit course begins with an introduction to the architecture of international environmental law and human rights law. The course then explores the ways that environmental, economic, social, and cultural human rights have been used to protect the environment and people. These rights include the rights to a healthy environment, clean water, life, and dignity. Next, the course explores specific human rights of indigenous and tribal people given their unique relationship the land and its resources. The course then applies human rights norms to climate change impacts, as well as the status of “climate refugees” before turning to human rights as they relate to international trade and multilateral development through the World Bank. Moving beyond human rights, the course explores the rights of nature and ecocide — an effort to make severe environmental harm a violation of international criminal law. Lastly, it looks at how governments and economic actors have violated the rights of environmental and human rights defenders and efforts to respond to those violations.
• Prerequisite: none
• Evaluation Method: Class participation and paper. This paper may apply to the Environmental Law Certificate or the International Law Certificate, as appropriate.
• Capstone: yes
• WIE: yes