AUTHOR: Pascale Kromarek

Organised in 1980 by the Institute for European Environmental Policy and hosted by the Austrian Minister of Health, the Salzburg conference brought together law professors, ministers, senior civil servants and other legal experts from European countries and the USA. Representatives from the executive bodies and parliaments of the European Economic Community and the Council of Europe also joined the discussion on what was scarcely known at the time: the right to environmental protection.

In snowy Salzburg, on 2 December 1980, a luncheon brought together a small group of people around the Austrian Minister of Health, Herbert Salcher, and the former President of the French National Assembly and then President of IEEP, Edgar Faure. The atmosphere was warm, and the guests toasted to the success of the conference that had opened that morning. The Salzburg conference brought together some sixty people, including law professors, ministers and senior civil servants, lawyers and other legal experts from a dozen European countries – including the nine Member States of the European Economic Community – and the USA. Representatives from the executive bodies and parliaments of the EEC and the Council of Europe also joined the discussion on what was scarcely known at the time: the right to environmental protection.

Organised by the Institute for European Environmental Policy and hosted by the Austrian Minister of Health, the conference followed on from an initial meeting, held two years earlier in Strasbourg at the initiative of IEEP and the International Institute of Human Rights, which outlined the contours of a human right to the environment.

Given the interdependence between the protection of human rights and the protection of the environment, as understood at the 1972 Stockholm Conference, it was agreed in Strasbourg that recognising the existence of a right of citizens to environmental protection contributes to the effective protection of that environment. A damaged environment constitutes a violation of every person’s right to enjoy a high-quality environment. Any person may therefore take legal action to seek compensation or to halt such an infringement.

Two years on in Salzburg, the focus was on considering the practical implementation of this right. Three legal means were analysed: access to information on the environment, public participation in decision-making concerning environmental protection, and access to justice to challenge decisions detrimental to the quality of the environment.

The Final Declaration summarises the conference’s conclusions: “Every person must have available, trustworthy and useful information concerning the environment (…); Every person must have the possibility to participate in the environmental decision-making process (…); It must be possible to sanction the right to conservation[1] of the environment by a means of recourse whenever environmental interests are endangered” (…).

Information on the environment, participation in environmental decision-making and access to justice were gradually recognised by countries and international organisations as rights ancillary to the right to a healthy environment and as essential to its realisation.

It is clear that, through these various conferences and publications, IEEP helped to raise awareness of the issue, in collaboration with the International Institute of Human Rights[2], UNESCO[3], the French Society for Environmental Law, the European University Institute in Florence, and teams of legal experts from several countries, inspired by the work of Professor Alexandre Kiss.

In the final decade of the 20th century, an increasing number of countries eventually enshrined a human right to the environment in their constitutions. International conventions, with varying degrees of legal binding force, recognised a right to a healthy and balanced environment. In 1992, the Rio Conference affirmed that: “Environmental issues are best handled with the participation of all concerned citizens, at the relevant level…”. Meanwhile, the European Community adopted a directive on access to environmental information in 1993 and has since progressively transposed the principles of the Aarhus Convention into its legislation.

The landmark Aarhus Convention was drawn up by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe in 1998. Ratified by 43 States, it institutionalised the three instruments that were originally examined at the Salzburg conference, enabling the realisation of the right to the environment: “To contribute to the protection of the right of every person of present and future generations to live in an environment adequate to his or her health and well-being, each Party shall guarantee the rights of access to information, public participation in decision-making, and access to justice in environmental matters …”. The oversight provided by the Compliance Committee ensured the real effectiveness of these provisions, which laid the foundations for an “environmental democracy”.

The recognition of a human right to the environment at the UN level symbolically concluded this 50-year evolution since the Stockholm Conference: “The General Assembly … Recognises the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a human right”[4]. Although not legally binding, this resolution became an essential reference document.

Paradoxically, however, just as the highest level of legal recognition of a right to the environment had been achieved, changes in the opposite direction began to develop. To be sure, climate and environmental litigations before international and national courts have multiplied since the 2015 Paris Agreement on the basis of, inter alia, the human right to the environment, forcing many political and economic leaders to face up to their responsibilities.

However, recent geopolitical shifts have sidelined the imperative to protect the environment and the climate; scientific findings are systematically being challenged, environmental data is being manipulated, and environmental destruction is undermining all the basic principles of nature conservation and humanitarian law. The progress made over the last 50 years regarding environmental rights and the rights to information and participation is being called into question. While only a part of the current global democratic crisis, these developments are so significant that the environment has become one of its symbols. With the retreat of environmental protection and the tools for its implementation, it is ultimately the question of humanity’s sustainability that is at stake.

[1] The term “conservation” (instead of “protection”) was used by the World Conservation Strategy, which was initiated by the IUCN together with the UNEP and the WWF in 1980.

[2] The institute was founded in Strasbourg by René Cassin, who co-authored the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

[3] See Pascale Kromarek (ed.), Environnement et Droits de l’Homme, Unesco, Paris, 1987

[4] UNGA Resolution A/76/L.75, 26 July 2022

Blog photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash

Pascale Kromarek is a lawyer with great expertise in environmental law. Pascale studied law and German in France, and after that, she lived in Germany for 20 years. She worked at the Institute for a European Environmental Policy as a Research Fellow in environmental law and policy. Following German reunification, she joined the oil company Elf Aquitaine and later Total, as coordinator for environmental legal issues. She has lectured on French law in Germany and environmental law in France, and contributes to environmental journals.