The Constitutional Environmental Duties of African Persons

Abstract

This article examines the constitutional environmental duties (CED) of legal persons (natural and artificial) in Africa. Based on a systematic analysis of the constitutions of 54 African countries, it provides empirical evidence of the substantial presence of CED of persons and sheds light on the framing of their relationship with constitutional environmental rights and the environmental duties of the state. This account of a specific category of duties of persons, from a non-Western perspective, is an important contribution to legal scholarship. It unsettles the dominant paradigm of “rights of individuals and duties of the state” by challenging the dismissal of the CED of persons as “symbolic” or “aspirational” and highlights the functional elements of these duties, which can be used to address violations of rights and / or the non-performance of duties by the state. These findings also have broader implications for constitutional, environmental and human rights law.