Do environmental rights have a role in the British planning system?

Ellis, Geraint 2006. Do environmental rights have a role in the British planning system? PhD Thesis, Cardiff University.

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Abstract

This thesis explores the role of environmental rights in British planning. It reviews the evolution of the concept of human rights and proposes a suitable definition of 'rights' to be used in planning research. It discusses typologies and statutory entrenchment environmental rights, showing that while rights have gained a privileged position in political discourse, the actual work of rights to a specific realm of public policy has been left unexplored. Within planing, the concept of rights appears to be deployed in four different discourses covering: property; participation; ethics; and rights as a device. The concept of a 'rights-frame' for planing is developed to provide a coherent framework for assessing the role of rights. This is used to develop an empirical investigation focusing on one environmental right, third party right of appeal (TPRA) and explores this by reviewing debate over its introduction in the UK and examining TPRA in Ireland. A key finding is while the value of rights is assumed to rest on their strength as legal instruments, this tends to result in conservative outcomes and that much potential lies in their use as a tool for argumentation and political mobilisation through political discourse. This points to the importance of understanding the social-construction of rights and an appreciation of the context of rights-claims. The thesis proposes that environmental rights should rightly be seen as having four discrete roles in planning, functioning as: i) A statement of the ethical principles of the planning system, standing as non-derogable objectives of land use regulation; ii) A tool for promoting public participation by motivating engagement around issues of justice and citizenship; iii) A heuristic tool for analyzing the outcomes of the planning process, by highlighting discrepancies between rhetorical values and actual outcomes planning practice; and iv) In a more conventional sense, a tool for legal protection

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Geography and Planning (GEOPL)
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	30 March 2016
Last Modified:	07 Nov 2019 09:09
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/55445

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