Constitutional Environmental Human Rights: A Descriptive Analysis of 142 National Constitutions

Abstract

I thank Amy Jeffords for her love and support, and for helpful editing. I thank Lanse Minkler and Shareen Hertel for helpful comments and suggestions that led to improvements in this paper. I also thank Joshua Berning and participants at the 2011 Economics and Social Rights Group Workshop for thoughtful discussions.

Do Constitutions Matter? The Effects of Constitutional Environmental Rights Provisions on Environmental Outcomes

“…The primary independent variables of interest are (1) the presence of a CER, and (2) a simple measure of the legal strength of a given CER based on its language. These data come from Jeffords (2013), where the first is operationalized by a simple indicator variable noting whether a constitution has a CER provision (denoted by a "1") or does not (denoted by a "0"), and the second specification is an additive index of seven keyword categories. Jeffords (2013) examined the constitutions of 198 countries as of 2010 for instances of CER provisions and found that 125 constitutions contain a uniquely written provision.…”

“…These data come from Jeffords (2013), where the first is operationalized by a simple indicator variable noting whether a constitution has a CER provision (denoted by a "1") or does not (denoted by a "0"), and the second specification is an additive index of seven keyword categories. Jeffords (2013) examined the constitutions of 198 countries as of 2010 for instances of CER provisions and found that 125 constitutions contain a uniquely written provision. 17 Each provision was then examined for the presence of seven keyword categories endemic to the literature that defines and outlines ERs.…”

“…Given the nature of the data from Jeffords (2013) and the possibility that some categories of language are more important than others or simply have different implications for ERs, we considered two additional empirical changes to the primary independent variables. To avoid investigator bias, we did not prioritize the rights categories in Jeffords (2013). Nevertheless, the categories are differentiated by topic, strength, and rights versus duties.…”

“…The second change was to simply use the category (4) of constitutional language from Jeffords (2013) which indicates if a constitution refers specifically to the right to a clean or healthy environment. As reported in the tables, the significance levels weakened a bit, but the signs and magnitudes were similar to those of the May and Daly results.…”

“…So the question needs to be resolved empirically. In order to test the hypothesis that CERs are to some extent necessary for good environmental outcomes, we construct new CER variables from the dataset compiled in Jeffords (2013). Constitutions from 198 countries were coded for CERs into seven different categories.…”