Integrating Environmental Values into the European Convention on Human Rights

Over the last two decades, the protection of the environment has become a necessity so widely recognized that environmental concerns have pervaded most fields of international law, including the international law of human rights. In 1976 the European Commission of Human Rights dismissed an application on the ground that “no right to nature conservation [was] as such included among the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Convention and in particular by Arts 2, 3, or 5.” In 1993, however, the Commission found that the erection and operation of a waste and water treatment station near the domicile of the applicant was such a nuisance as to amount to a violation of her right to a private life. This development in the case law of the European Commission reflects a growing awareness of the links between protection of human rights and protection of the environment.