The proposal of an additional protocol on environmental rights to the European Convention on Human Rights

The aim of this thesis is to analyze the challenges faced nowadays because of climate change in the international sphere and how they turn into juridical cases. This study provides an overview of how environmental cases are ruled at the European Court of Human Rights and how the Court includes them through their connection to human rights; in fact, even though environmental rights are recognized in almost every international Treaty and Organization, there’s still not a precise definition of what they mean. Because of this, it is complex for the European Court of Human Rights to rule on environmental cases: its judges appeal to various articles of the European Convention of Human Rights as a way of considering the applications and, therefore, declaring them admissible or not. Climate change represents a real menace to the present generation and for the coming ones and it is necessary to guarantee the protection of the environment in order to enjoy one’s rights as a human being. For this reason, in this thesis there will be the proposal of an additional protocol on environmental rights to the ECHR, allowing the Court to consider environmental cases based on their own legislation.