Human Rights and the Environment in Africa A Research Companion

The relationship between human rights and the environment, as evidenced by the 2022 UN Resolution on the human right to a healthy environment, is a topical, fascinating, uneasy, and increasingly urgent one. This timely collection explores the inextricable relationship between human rights and the environment as a critical lens for understanding and addressing key human rights and environmental issues confronting Africa.

The work explores theoretical, philosophical, and doctrinal, research to interrogate and provide clarity on how and whether the human rightsbased approach to environmental protection and policy implications has been effective in enhancing environmental protection and sustainability in Africa. It brings together an elite group of African and international experts to investigate the increasing connectivity and problems with African human rights, environmental governance, and the quest for sustainability.

The book is divided into thematic clusters, including the right of vulnerable communities to sustainability; climate change, the right to development and natural resource governance; corporate environmental responsibility and sustainability; the philosophy of environmental ethics and theories of human rights approaches to environmental governance; procedural environmental rights; the role of the judiciary in environmental protection; and desertification. These themes provide a structure to investigate and clarify specific fundamental questions on Africa?s environmental governance paradigm.

This innovative contribution provides an interdisciplinary approach to the philosophical interrelationship and use of human rights approaches to ensure and enhance environmental protection and sustainability. As such, the book will be of interest to African scholars, researchers, and students in human rights law, environmental studies, political science, ecology and conservation, and development studies. It will also be a valuable resource for policymakers, governments, NGOs, practitioners, and all those interested in African environmental governance.

Foreword xi

List of contributors xiii

Acknowledgement xxiii

1 Introduction: African environmentalism and sustainability – framing the epistemic parameters of human rights and the environment in Africa 1

JEAN-CLAUDE N. ASHUKEM

PART 1

Legal, theoretical, and philosophical issues of human rights and the environment in Africa 17

2 Critical reflections on rights theory and environmental ethics in environmental jurisprudence: an African perspective in pursuit of environmental sustainability 19

SAMUEL BASSEY AND PAUL TERNGU HAAGA

3 The emergence of a human right to a healthy environment and the pursuit of sustainability in Africa 39

EMMANUEL KASIMBAZI, AND JEAN-CLAUDE N. ASHUKEM

4 Human rights and the environment in pursuit of sustainability in Africa: a critical assessment of folkloric, legal, and political economy perspectives 59

OLAWALE AJAI

5 Human rights and the pursuit of environmental sustainability in Africa: issues and problems in African environmental ethics and environmental law 78

SAMUEL BASSEY AND JOHN ELIZABETH OKON

PART 2

Procedural environmental rights in Africa 95

6 International participatory rights and environment protection in Africa – powerful tools or “sleeping rights”? 97

JONAS EBBESSON

7 Procedural rights and trans-regional environmental governance in pursuit of sustainability in Africa: a new African treaty or taking the Aarhus Convention’s route? 116

JEAN-CLAUDE N. ASHUKEM AND TOLULOPE N. OGBORU

8 Pursuing environmental sustainability in Africa: procedural obstacles to environmental litigation based on human rights law 136

DINAH SHELTON

PART 3

Judiciary and the environment in Africa 159

9 Stepping into the future of environmental sustainability in Africa: a case for regional environmental courts 161

CHIDINMA THERESE ODAGHARA

10 International criminal law and the pursuit of environmental sustainability in Africa 179

THOMAS ROSE, LL.M, MSL

11 The judiciary and environmental protection in Africa in pursuit of sustainability: creating an environmental rule of law jurisprudence in response to climate change imperatives 197

FUNMI ABIOYE

12 The justiciability of the right to a healthy environment in the French-speaking states of Africa 214

VINCENT ZAKANÉ

PART 4

Rights to development and natural resources in Africa 237

13 Land grabbing and the right to a healthy environment: the pursuit of sustainability under the African charter on human and peoples’ rights 239

SEMIE M. SAMA

14 Contested priority in the pursuit of sustainability in Africa: the right to development and/or the right to a satisfactory environment under the African Charter? 258

JEAN-CLAUDE N. ASHUKEM AND KAREN MORROW

15 Land grabbing in the Anthropocene and the “questionable” pursuit of sustainability in Africa – highlighting ecological disproportionality 276

JEAN-CLAUDE N. ASHUKEM

16 The inefficacy of international law to address biodiversity loss in Africa: a quest for environmental sustainability through an Ecocentric approach 295

CHANE CLARECE HENNEY

17 Reflections on the re-orientation of the methods of shared waters governance in African river basin organisations 312

FRANCOIS BOKONA

PART 5

Rights of vulnerable communities and sustainability in Africa 329

18 The rights of vulnerable communities to development in pursuit of environmental sustainability in Africa: the role of the African Union 331

EBUN ABOLARIN

19 The implication of extractive industries’ operation on human and environmental rights of vulnerable groups in pursuit of environmental sustainability in Africa 353

TSEPO CHEDA

PART 6

Climate change and migration in Africa 373

20 Climate action and the pursuit of environmental sustainability in Africa: an analysis of Africa’s involvement in COP26 discussions 375

LARISSA-JANE H. HOUSTON

21 Assessing African Union’s regime on climate change 396

RICHARD OBENG MENSAH, AND ROSE ASAMOAH

PART 7

Desertification in Africa 413

22 Fostering sustainability through mobility – How opening Africa’s borders combats desertification 415

MORITZ VON ROCHOW

23 A rights-based approach to desertification control in pursuit of sustainability in Africa 435

CHARLOTTE KABASEKE

24 Conclusion: towards a more resilient and sustainable human environmental rights future for Africa 452

JEAN-CLAUDE N. ASHUKEM

Index 463

Jean-Claude N. Ashukem is Researcher at the Global Environmental Law Centre at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. He serves on the Editorial Board of GNOSI: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Human Theory and Praxis.

Semie M. Sama is Assistant Professor of Law at Lakehead University, Canada.