Beyond Constitutional Promises: Examining the Enforcement of Environmental Rights in Uganda Through Climate Justice and Ecological Constitutionalism

The right to a clean and healthy environment is often treated as secondary in discussions of human rights, even where, as in Uganda, it is written into the Constitution. This systematic literature review asks how far that right, and the statutory rights of nature and climate provisions that now surround it, is realised and enforced in practice, using climate justice and ecological constitutionalism as analytical lenses. A PRISMA-adapted protocol was applied across list the databases actually searched in two streams: scholarly literature, and primary and grey sources such as legislation, case records and institutional reports. Records were identified and sources were included after screening and appraisal. The evidence suggests that constitutional recognition is a necessary foundation rather than a sufficient cause of enforcement. It has supported relaxed standing, public trust reasoning and some protective court orders, but delay, weak remedies, jurisdictional rules, limited institutional capacity and pressure on environmental defenders reduce its effect, and the statutory right of nature has yet to be tested in court. Public awareness of constitutional rights also appears limited, so educating the public, and private industry in particular, about the right to a healthy environment and the duty to protect it is a practical precondition for enforcement. The review finds a thin body of peer-reviewed, Uganda-specific research and proposes empirical, doctrinal and comparative directions for future work.