ABSTRACT
Environmental harms, such as pollution, biodiversity loss, deforestation, soil erosion, and climate change, can have sustained and severe impacts on both human and nonhuman life. This chapter begins with a discussion of the relationship between the environment and human rights. It then turns to Henry Shue's influential notion of 'standard threats' to explore how environmental harms give rise to rights and duties. The chapter also reflects on the ways in which concepts of harm and rights are divergently used in relation to environmental justice by political theorists and those involved in human rights practice. It focuses briefly on whether future humans and nonhumans can be bearers of human rights, and what this means for the project of achieving environmental justice. The chapter concludes that recognition of environmental issues as human rights issues prompts reflection on the human as an ecologically embedded being.
