La costituzionalizzazione dei principi dell’ambiente: dalla Charte de l’Environnement francese alle esperienze africane

The Constitutionalisation of Environmental Principles: from the French Charte de l'Environnement to African experiences

Abstract

Although linked to distinct models, the precautionary and preventive principles represent the most mature reaction of environmental law to the increase in human activities that are risky to ecological balances, in the wake of the search for a more sustainable form of development and in an attempt to overcome, or at least mitigate, the restorative logic of the polluter-pays principle.
The three principles, stemming from international and European law, have gained constitutional status in several legal systems, not only in the shape of specific declinations of a state duty to protect the environment – as in the case of the Charte de l'Environnement, which is one of a kind in the European scene – but also in the declared form of principles informing the management and development of the environment and natural resources.
This is the case with a number of young African Constitutions, within which this article proposes to investigate the role played by the three environmental principles in the process of constitutionalisation of the environment, and to compare it with the model offered by the previous French experience. African Constitutions, characterized by a high importance of environmental value within the constitutional framework, express, through the constitutionalisation of the principles mentioned above, one of the innovative and virtuous trends of environmental constitutionalism that are rising up from the Global South.