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"One of the most remarkable developments of the twentieth century has been the worldwide growth of public concern for the environment. Efforts to translate that concern into effective public policy have posed formidable challenges for the legal system. Even as our understanding of environmental problems has improved, we have become acutely aware of the complexity and uncertainty that bedevil efforts to trace the effects of human activities on the environment." --from the Preface

Law and the Environment: A Multidisciplinary Reader brings together for the first time some of the most important original work on environmental policy by scientists, ecologists, philosophers, historians, economists, and legal scholars. Each of the book's four parts provides a different focus on the nature and scope of environmental problems and attempts to use public policy to address these concerns. Part I examines how ecology, economics, and ethics analyze environmental problems and why they support collective action to respond to them. Part II examines the history and present state of environmental law, from early attempts to engage the government to current debate over the effectiveness of environmental policy. Part III explores the process by which environmental law gets translated into regulatory policy. Part IV considers the future of environmental law at a time when international environmental concerns have become a major force in global diplomacy and international trade agreements.

In drawing  together a wide variety of perspectives on these issues, Robert V. Percival and Dorothy C. Alevizatos offer a comprehensive examination of how society has responded to the difficult challenges posed by environmental problems. The selections provide a rich introduction to the complexities of environmental policy disputes.

All over the world, people are experiencing the effects of ecosystem decline, from water shortages to fish kills to landslides on deforested slopes. The victims of environmental degradation tend to belong to more vulnerable sectors of society—racial and ethnic minorities and the poor—who regularly carry a disproportionate burden of such abuse. Increasingly, many basic human rights are being placed at risk, as the right to health affected by contamination of resources, or the right to property and culture compromised by commercial intrusion into indigenous lands. Despite the evident relationship between environmental degradation and human suffering, human rights violations and environmental degradation have been treated by most organizations and governments as unrelated issues. Just as human rights advocates have tended to place only civil and political rights onto their agendas, environmentalists have tended to focus primarily on natural resource preservation without addressing human impacts of environmental abuse. As a result, victims of environmental degradation are unprotected by the laws and mechanisms established to address human rights abuses. This book brings together contributions from human rights and environmental experts who have devoted much of their work to unifying these two spheres, particularly in the legal arena. It presents a variety of issues and approaches that address human rights and environmental links, demonstrating the growing interrelationship between human rights law and environmental advocacy. Its coverage includes reviews of existing international laws and treaties that establish the rights to a healthy environment, an overview of mechanisms that allow both individuals and groups to seek remedy for abuses, and specific cases that document efforts to seek redress for victims of environmental degradation through existing human rights protection mechanisms. Through examples ranging from water rights to women's rights, this collection offers practical ways in which environmental protection can be approached through human rights instruments. The volume reproduces a legal brief (amicus curiae) filed before an international human rights tribunal making the human rights and environment linkage argument, and includes the subsequent precedent-setting decision handed down by the Inter-American Court on Human Rights recognizing this linkage. Linking Human Rights and Environment is a valuable sourcebook that explores the uncharted territory that lies between environmental and human rights legislation. More than a theoretical treatise, it argues that human rights activism presents a significant opportunity to address the human consequences of environmental degradation and can serve as a catalyst for inspiring ideas and action in the real world.