ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a convergence of anthropocentric and biocentric grounds for environmental rights. It discusses a new generation of rights, the rights of nature, whether construed as human environmental rights or as biotic rights. The chapter argues for nature's rights as rights with international standing, a parallel to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Universal Declaration on Human Rights, together with most interpretations of rights, says nothing about environmental bases or dimensions of human rights. Human environmental rights are an extension of the moral framework and discourse that has grounded human rights; biotic rights reside in a different framework with a different rationale. One yields grounds for biotic rights, the other for human environmental rights. Grounds for such rights may themselves be religious or non-religious. Human rights and social justice, much less minimal survival requirements, cannot be realized in an environment unfit for human habitation.
