Social and legal aspects of the environmental dimension of health

This study presents the description of the "environmental dimension of health" which is located in a conceptual framework set between the social and the legal sphere. The "environmental dimension of health" outlined in the legal sphere consists of three matrices that describe an innovative theoretical framework, in which the right to health is confronted by environmental and sustainability issues. The first matrix relates particularly to the right to a healthy environment, which has sometimes been interpreted as a mere extension of the right to privacy in the individual’s private and family life, other times as a right that relates to a people’s cultural integrity and identity; the second matrix involves a right to health which refers to environmental issues, but does not come exactly under the heading of the right to a healthy environment and that envisages both cases of environmental nuisances and a new socio-legal perspective in the study of the right to health, concerning the call for this right as a consequence of harm caused by climate change (such as the cases concerning the Inuit petition and Kivalina); meanwhile, the third matrix aims to build a "sustainable health law", including both the right to health and the right to ustainable development.

Keywords: Health, Environment, Society, Law, Sustainability, Climate change

Marco Ettore Grasso, La dimensione ambientale della salute: tra sfera sociale e giuridica in "SOCIOLOGIA DEL DIRITTO " 1/2011, pp 57-82, DOI: 10.3280/SD2011-001003