Environment and Constitution in Argentina Republic

VIOLETA RADOVICH

Congreso; 15º Coloquio de la Academia de Derecho Internacional de la Unión Internacional por la Conservación de la Naturaleza (UICN) ?Stories of the World We Want and the Law as its Pathway?; 2017

Academia de Derecho Internacional de la Unión Internacional por la Conservación de la Naturaleza (UICN)-University of Cebu

The aim of this paper is to analyze how the Constitution Amendment carried out in 1994 introduced in the Argentine Constitution the duty and the right to protect the environment and vested over the Parliament the duty to enact laws of essential requisites so as to uniform environmental legislation in the country. The essential results show that eleven laws of essential requisites have been enacted so far- one general law of the environment, a law concerning domiciliary wastes, another one considering industrial wastes, a law concerning public environmental information, another one devoted to PCBs, a law devoted to water, a law concerning forests, another law concerning glaciers, a law related to prevention of fires, and the last one devoted to plant protection containers. Argentina is a federal Republic, so Provinces are reluctant to apply these laws since before the constitutional reform each Province decided over its natural resources and the Parliament had no power to enforce essential requirements applicable to all Provinces.The conclusion is that after the 1994 Constitution Amendment, the Environment is undoubtedly more protected than ever in Argentina Republic, several judicial cases have been issued in this sense and several laws have been enacted at the national and provincial level. However, as the Constitution has changed the distribution of jurisdiction regarding the protection of the Environment, the pathway is not easy but has been successful so far.