The so-called right to the environment: a challenge to the theory of fundamental rights

Abstract

Ever since the Stockholm Declaration (1972), practically all Constitutional texts include environmental regulations in one form or another. None, however, admits a true individual right to the environment as such, that is, an immediately invocable power to protect the natural world. The absence of such a power is perfectly understandable if we consider that the «environment» is, broadly speaking, a collective asset. Its protection cannot be carried out from the status libertatis that constitutional fundamental rights draw up, but only from a status procuratoris, a category that is not in complete correspondence with the entitlement of an individual right. It is the political authorities who must decide what techniques are most appropriate to guarantee environmental care. A fundamental right to the «natural world» would only have a distorting effect, as it would move the political decision to the area of litigation, where the interests of the individual would be inflated.