Right to a Healthy Environment and Legal Regulation of Viticulture

Abstract

The foundations for the introduction and development of the modern right to a healthy environment were laid almost half a century ago, by adoption of the Declaration on the Human Environment at the United Nations thematic Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm in 1972. The gathering was preceded by extensive preparations in which members of the academic community and people from politics participated equally. Scientists have obviously prepared a good basis for considering key issues, and representatives of member states and UN bodies have given it an appropriate political dimension. Thanks to that, reasonable, necessary compromises were made, which made it possible to establish a (fragile) balance of interests in the then polarized world and to start a process of great importance for humanity with a lot of optimism. Unfortunately, relatively little has been done on global level since then. This is evidenced by the terminological inconsistency and conceptual uncertainty of the right to a healthy environment, unclear legal nature, dominant development and expansion through constitutionalization at the national level (not on the basis of international instruments), as well as indirect application through the so-called greening of other human rights. The United Nations Human Rights Council, which in October 2021 adopted a Resolution on a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment by which the right to a healthy environment was raised to the level of human rights, officially assessed that many questions about the relationship of human rights and the environment remain unanswered and require further examination.

This paper opens several interrelated topics whose consideration can contribute to the further development of the right to a healthy environment. The author believes that over time there will be an interaction between the right to a healthy environment and property rights; that this will pave the way for a more extensive interpretation that could result in an individual's autonomous right to independently shape a healthy environment in the space person uses as the owner or holder of another property right; that such interaction would enable the owner to more effectively counter unjustified restrictions on property rights established by state bodies or supranational institutions, such as those existing in the field of viticulture. The paper points out the need to rethink policies and rights related to agriculture and to pay more attention to the part of the population that contributes to the preservation of a healthy environment through their way of life and work. In the final part, winegrowers ’oases that represent specific spatial units are analyzed.