Plastic Pollution and the Human Right to a Healthy Environment in Cameroon: A Legal Appraisal
摘要
Plastic pollution is increasingly becoming one of the most challenging environmental problems Cameroonians are grappling with. It constitutes a great threat to the enjoyment of the human right to a healthy environment as guaranteed by the Cameroonian Constitution, national, regional, and global human rights, and environmental legal instruments. The human environmental and health implications of plastic pollution nowadays are palpable. The human right to a healthy environment is indispensable for the full enjoyment of other human rights such as the rights to life, health, food, and water which are all bedeviled by plastic pollution. Thus, any threat to the right to a healthy environment constitutes a corresponding threat to the rights to life, health, water, and food. This chapter examines the connection between plastic pollution and the enjoyment of the human right to a healthy environment in Cameroon. It analyses the Constitution of Cameroon and relevant environmental and human rights legal instruments to determine whether the law addresses the implications of plastic pollution for the enjoyment of the human right to a healthy environment in Cameroon. The analysis is complemented by a doctrinal review of secondary data to substantiate the arguments. The chapter concludes that the level of legal attention given to plastic pollution and the threat it poses to the full realisation of the human right to a healthy environment in Cameroon is inadequate. It provides some recommendations on the legal and policy measures to curb plastic pollution and to create an enabling environment for the enjoyment of the human right to a healthy environment in Cameroon.