Examining the right to a healthy environment from the perspective of public law

The future of human life depends upon preserving a healthy environment free of any pollution (contaminants) and the environmental destruction could eventually bring about the destruction of humanity. Therefore, the environmental degradation and pollution is not only despicable, but hazardous and costly as well and the public has a duty to protect it. In this regard, to have the environment protected from pollution and degradation due to reasons such as urban high population growth and the necessity to devise a settlement, urban and industrial wastes, destruction of forests and other natural resources, air pollution in large cities, many countries have enacted environmental laws and regulations in their legal systems and have established organizations, institutions and agencies devoted to the environmental protection. On the other hand, as the right to a healthy environment is one of citizenship rights linked integrally to the sustainable development, the enactment of legislation should, at a minimum, be in relation to the principles of sustainable development. The present research is an analytic and descriptive study using library resources including articles, books and other materials about the subject area. This study indicated that many laws have been approved in order to protect the environment, but they didn’t fully respect the foundations and principles of sustainable environmental development; so that some of these principles are considered at the standard-level by legislator, some have not been mentioned, and some others remained implicit by the legislator.