Elifuraha Laltaika, Environmental law lecturer of Tumaini University Makumira
The call was made at the weekend by an Environmental law lecturer of Tumaini University Makumira, Elifuraha Laltaika.
He was speaking at a public lecture on the link between human rights and the environment organised by the university’s law faculty.
“The constitutional provision will ensure highest protection of the environmental rights including the right to sustainably use the country’s natural resources that may otherwise be undermined by ordinary legislation,” he cautioned.
According to Laltaika, the provision, as presented in the draft constitution by the Constitutional Review Commission and tabled before the Constituent Assembly earlier this year, calls for the right to a healthy and clean environment in the bill of rights.
He said the Article 41 of the draft constitution, also places Tanzania in the growing list of progressive countries that have given sustainable economic development and environmental protection the highest level of legal recognition.
Speaking at the same event, Professor John Bonine from the University of Oregon USA outlined the integral connection between human rights and the environment noting that in the last forty years, more than half of the world’s nations have adopted the constitutional right to a healthy environment.
“The landmark Stockholm Declaration of 1972 was very significant as it inspired other countries to include environmental rights in their supreme laws,” Professor Bonine said.
He argued that by incorporating the right to a clean and healthy environment in the constitution, national governments show their highest and collective commitment to sustainable development.
As for the role of courts in developing progressive jurisprudence, the renowned international environmental law expert said courts in some 12 countries around the world have interpreted the right to life and health to include the right to live in a clean and safe environment.
“High courts in at least 12 nations have ruled that the right to a healthy and clean environment is implicit in the constitutional right to life and health,” he said.
“In an even more encouraging move, ninety-two nations have explicitly incorporated the right into their constitutions,” he noted.
Professor Bonine, who is also the Co-founder of Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (ELAW), an NGO with members from 80 countries, including Tanzania, is visiting the university’s law faculty to deliver public lectures and inspire involvement by lecturers, legal practitioners and the general public.
A member of the commission on environmental law of the World Conservation Union and an elected member of the International Council of Environmental Lawyers Professor Bonine, his latest publication, “Human rights and the environment” is used as a textbook in numerous law schools in the USA including the University of Oregon where he has been teaching human rights and the environment for the last 45 years.
His visit was part of the customary trend by the Tumaini University’s Faculty of Law which invites prominent scholars to speak on diverse thematic issues relevant to the promotion and protection of human rights and the environment.
Previous visiting scholars included his Lordship Gerard Niyungeko, the then President of the African Court on Human and Peoples Rights (ACHPR).
SOURCE:
THE GUARDIAN
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