PENNSYLVANIA
KNOW YOUR RIGHTS
Article I Section 27 of the Pennsylvania constitution states:
“The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania's public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people.”
The Environmental rights amendment
Structured as it is, in three sentences, the ERA effectively does three things:
It establishes that the people of Pennsylvania have a right to clean air, pure water, and the preservation of natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment.
It establishes that “public natural resources” are the common property of all Pennsylvanians, including future generations.
It makes the Commonwealth—including all levels and branches of government—the trustee of these public natural resources. This means that the Commonwealth has a duty to conserve and maintain Pennsylvania’s public natural resources for the benefit of the people.
The drafters chose to place the ERA in Article I of the Pennsylvania Constitution, otherwise known as the Declaration of Rights, which sets forth what the drafters consider to be “general, great and essential principles of liberty and free government.” This placement means that Pennsylvanians’ environmental rights are placed alongside and on par with our fundamental political rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, the right to trial by jury, and the right to bear arms. Pennsylvania is one of only four states (along with Montana, Rhode Island, and New York) to elevate and affirm its people’s environmental rights in this way.
GREEN AMENDMENTS FOR THE GENERATIONS
In 2013, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network led by Green Amendments founder & Delaware Riverkeeper Maya van Rossum, won a watershed legal victory that not only protected Pennsylvania communities from ruthless frackers, but affirmed the constitutional right of people in the state to a clean and healthy environment. Following this victory, van Rossum defined the term “Green Amendment” and launched the Green Amendment movement, dedicated to empowering every American community to mobilize for constitutional change in order to protect our environment for present and future generations.
The goal of Green Amendments For The Generations is to advance a national, state by state, Green Amendment movement and to ensure that governments across the nation at the local and state level honor the rights of all people to pure water, clean air, a stable climate and healthy environments in the laws they enact, the decisions they make, and the actions they take by securing the passage of enforceable environmental rights amendments in the Bill of Rights section of every constitution – state and federal – and ensuring their strong and meaningful enforcement.