Reconceptualising the Right to a Clean and Healthy Environment: An Analytical Human Rights Perspective

The reconceptualisation of the right to a clean and healthy environment as a standalone fundamental human right represents a seismic shift in international and domestic jurisprudence, reframing ecological imperatives as non-negotiable entitlements integral to human dignity. This comprehensive analytical study traces the doctrinal metamorphosis—from Stockholm 1972’s nascent linkages through UNHRC Resolution 48/13 (2021), UNGA 76/300 (2022), and the ICJ’s transformative 2024 advisory opinion—juxtaposed against constitutional evolutions, with India’s Article 21 serving as paradigmatic. Grounded in 2026 data—9.4 million pollution deaths (Lancet), 95 million climate-displaced (UNHCR), IPBES’s 1 million species extinction forecast—the paper elucidates environmental rights’ indivisibility from first-, second-, and third-generation entitlements. Employing doctrinal, comparative, and empirical methodologies, it dissects seminal jurisprudence (Subhash Kumar , KlimaSeniorinnen ), institutional architectures (NGT, ECtHR), and enforcement pathologies (71% unimplemented NGT orders [CAG 2025]). Objectives encompass conceptual reconstruction, global-national dialectics, efficacy audits, impediment typologies, and prescriptive architectures. Critical findings expose aspirational affirmations undermined by implementation chasms, corporate impunity, North-South inequities, and anthropocentric legacies. The analysis advocates ecocentric constitutionalism, transnational rights litigation, just transition imperatives, and AI-enhanced monitoring. By bridging normative ambition with remedial realism, this reconceptualisation charts pathways operationalising clean environments as lived human rights amid polycrisis—biodiversity collapse, 1.2°C breach, sixth extinction—securing intergenerational justice.