Challenging anthropocentrism in human rights: children’s relational approach to the right to a healthy environment
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Date
2026-09-01
Authors
Murray, Emily Margaret
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Publisher
Edward Elgar Publishing
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Abstract
As the world faces increasingly interconnected social and ecological challenges, many activists and scholars are turning towards relational approaches to rethink how humans live with and within nature. The law has become increasingly recognized as a vehicle for driving stronger protection for both the environment and humans, and deep systemic change. Yet even legal frameworks often operate within anthropocentric and dualistic structures that position humans as separate from nature – facilitated by modernism, capitalism and Euro-centric ontologies. In this article, it is argued that children and young people are championing a relational approach to climate justice which challenges the underpinning assumptions of the human rights framework. Through child/youth-involved climate cases, young plaintiffs are drawing on their relationships with the natural world to demonstrate how the climate crisis is violating their rights and subsequently giving meaning – through their own lived relational experiences – to the right to a healthy environment. Drawing on child/youth climate cases and research from children’s geographies and developmental psychology, this article argues that children and youth are contributing in their own distinct ways to emerging human rights conceptualizations that reimagine the human/nature relationship beyond anthropocentric and dualistic terms.
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Keywords
Children , Youth , Climate justice , The right to a healthy environment , Relationality , Anthropocentrism , Climate litigation
Citation
Murray, E. M. (2026) 'Challenging anthropocentrism in human rights: Children’s relational approach to the right to a healthy environment', Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, pp.1-37. https://doi.org/10.4337/jhre.2026.0016
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© 2026, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.