Environmental protection and the European Convention on Human Rights (Human Rights File No. 21) (2005)

Nowhere in the European Convention on Human Rights does the word appear. In any event, its drafters would have had a different view of the term from ours, over half a century later.Recent years have seen a growing awareness of the environment as something to be protected, rather than taken for granted.Nevertheless, as the European Court has said on more than one occasion, the Convention is a "living instrument", which has shown itself capable of adapting with the times; and today,some analysts see in the Court's case-law a tendency to interpret certain provisions of the Convention as affording at least a degree of environmental protection, thus recognising a"human right to the environment".In this study, Daniel García San José examines the material in detail to confront the question"Does the European Convention on Human Rights provide the right to the environment?"