David Boyd, author and environmental lawyer, will present his new book, "The Right to a Healthy Environment: Revitalizing Canada's Constitution." Boyd describes how recognizing the constitutional right to a healthy environment could have a transformative impact, empowering citizens, holding governments and industry accountable, and improving Canada's green record. The overwhelming majority of the world's nations now recognize the right to a healthy environment through laws, constitutions, treaties, or court decisions. Boyd explores Canada's history of failed efforts to do the same within this international context and evaluates three pathways to constitutional recognition of the right to a healthy environment. The Right to a Healthy Environment makes the case that constitutional recognition of environmental rights and responsibilities would both reflect and reinforce Canadian values, much as the Charter of Rights and Freedoms confirmed and enhanced our commitment to equality. This important, provocative book provides a blueprint renewed leadership in protecting human health, the well-being of the planet, and the interests of future generations.
David R. Boyd is one of Canada's leading environmental lawyers, an adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University, and an adviser on environmental policy to governments in Canada and Sweden. He is also an international expert on human rights and the environment, assisting countries from Iceland to Tunisia in securing constitutional protection for the right to a healthy environment.
Books will be available for sale at both events. Organized by the East Coast Environmental Law Association, the Nova Scotia Environmental Law & Policy Caucus, Ecojustice, David Suzuki Foundation, Environmental Law Student Society, Marine & Environmental Law Institute at Dalhousie University, and the Environment & Sustainability Studies at Acadia University. More information: http://www.ecelaw.ca/