As this group of cases illustrate, the “greening approach” falls within the purely instrumental approach to environmental protection outlined above, as it only mitigates the adverse environmental impact on well-being of particular individuals or a group of individuals and is not concerned with the environmental protection per se [67] . Instead, in these particular cases, it is the protection of indigenous people’s rights and their traditional ways of living that remain the center of the complaint, as opposed to the environmental degradation. To put it differently, from the perspective of inter-legality, “the human rights greening” amounts to a parochial approach, which merely advances the objective of the human rights regime, without taking into account the wider aim of protecting the environment as a value in its own right. Importantly, as a result of viewing the environmental issues exclusively through the human rights paradigm, this category of cases requires the proof that plaintiff’s rights are sufficiently affected by the environmental harm, in order to force the state to mitigate the environmental degradation [68] . In other words, under the “human rights greening” approach, the individual will have no standing without the strong link between the environmental degradation and the human rights violation, thereby excluding the possibility of public interest litigation by wider civil society [69] .

In fact, other cases before the IACtHR demonstrate that collective claims to enjoyment of natural resources from general population – coming outside the context of indigenous peoples’ rights – so far, have not been accepted in the Inter-American human rights system [70] . This is illustrated by Metropolitan Nature Reserve case, in which the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights rejected the claim of citizens of Panama alleging the violation of the ¶{p. 482}right to property under article 21 due to the construction of a roadway through protected area in Panama City [71] . In particular, the Commission declared the complaint inadmissible as it concerned “abstract victims represented in an actio popularis”, rather than specifically identified and defined individuals” whose rights were violated [72] .

To sum up, despite certain advancements, the self-referential approach of the Court to environmental issues consisting of greening the Convention rights has limited potential to foster the environmental justice as it is strictly operating within the logic of human rights, without treating the environment as a value in itself. Arguably, the “environmental democracy approach” focused on procedural environmental rights rates better in terms of balancing the objectives of the two regimes.

The second approach that can be identified in the case law of the Inter-American Court is the so-called “environmental democracy” theory, which seeks to empower citizens and civil society actors to influence public decisions and policies on environmental matters through procedural environmental rights [73] . These rights normally include the right to information, the right to participation in the decision-making and the right to judicial remedies, which are provided in general form in the American Convention and other regional human rights treaties. In addition to these instruments, these rights have been reaffirmed explicitly as applicable in environmental field by the 1998 Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation ¶{p. 483}in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (“the Aarhus Convention”) [74] .

The Aarhus Convention, adopted by the UN Economic Commission for Europe, despite its regional scope, was described by the former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan as “the most ambitious venture in the area of ‘environmental democracy’ so far undertaken under the auspices of the United Nations” [75] . The significance of the Convention is that it is the first international agreement that lays down the obligations of States towards their citizens and civil society actors in environmental matters [76] . In doing so, it adopts a broader – in comparison to a human rights treaty – public interest approach to environmental protection, which manifests itself in more relaxed standing rules for petitioners, comprising not only individuals but also NGOs [77] . To illustrate, article 4 of the Convention requires the State party to ensure that public authorities make environmental information available to the public concerned when requested, defining the latter as “the public affected or likely to be affected by, or having an interest in, the environmental decision-making”, including NGOs promoting environmental protection [78] . In other words, individuals and civil society actors have a right to request environmental information without having to prove that they have been affected by environmental degradation. Similarly, the same threshold of “sufficient interest” applies to articles 6 and 9 of the Convention, providing for the ¶{p. 484}rights to public participation in environmental executive decisions and access to justice if the requested environmental information is denied [79] .