Life, The Universe and Everything: A Critique of Anthropocentric Rights

Abstract In Chapter 3 we saw that one critique of a human rights approach to environmental protection is its anthropocentricity; that a human right to a clean, healthy, or decent environment ignores the rights of animals and nature. There are two distinctive strands to such criticisms, broadly identified as deep ecology or environmentalism, and animal rights.4 Within each strand different motivations and philosophies are at work, ranging from a religious reverence for the preservation of all life to a more generalized repugnance towards anthropocentric justifications for environmental conservation. It is the purpose of this chapter to examine critiques of a human rights approach to environmental protection as ‘anthropocentric’ from the animal rights and environmentalist perspectives.