Sustainable Development and the Environmental Rule of Law: A Human Rights Approach to Sustainable Sand Governance in the International Regime

Living in a rights based legal system encounters the essentiality of sustainable development as its core. Thus, sustainability and human rights makes sides of the same coin. In the era of endangered ecosystems, sustainable development aims strike a balance between human economic interests and ecological protection. This balance is crucial because environmental harm would intrude human prosperity. Good governance always emphasises rule of law and therefore environmental rule of law is a want as well as need of today’s world. Effective legal mandates are necessary for good environmental governance. In the International as well as the national perspectives, States always have the obligation to ensure healthy environment. But while specifically addressing issues such as sand mining, it must be underlined that despite its transboundary impacts, it is not discussed as a serious one as other environmental concerns. Sand management and mining activities has always posed unanswered questions of control mechanisms, particularly within the international regime. This paper aims to focus on the relation between human rights and sustainable development, specifically highlighting environmental rule of law. It addresses the issue of sand extraction, its management and legal control mechanism and its lacunas in the international regime.