Legal Perspectives on a Human Rights-Based Approach to Energy Access in the Philippines
(February 2018) 62-3 Ateneo Law Journal 669
Posted: 7 Nov 2018
Date Written: November 7, 2018
Abstract
While the International Bill of Human Rights has received global assent, it is argued that its implementation remains almost exclusively national. This strongly applies in the sphere of socioeconomic rights and development where the ‘need for an active state has always been especially clear’ with its emergence ‘as both the principal threat to the enjoyment of human rights and the essential institution for their effective implementation and enforcement’. In essence, a human rights-based approach operates with both result and procedure orientations in which the state, including its organs (executive, legislative and judicial) play a central role. Along this line, the guarantee of access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services, as one of the targets under Sustainable Development Goal 7, represents the result aspect of the human rights-based approach; while the legal, policy and regulatory framework under which state action occurs embodies the procedural part. In turn, a human rights-based approach looks into the state’s implementation – through the constitution or national legislation or both - of its commitments under the international human rights regime, particularly socioeconomic rights, in order to examine the challenge and the nature of the change being sought to achieve universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services in the domestic context. This entails an examination of institutions, practices and norms as targets for change, including the key role that the judiciary plays, to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Having this in mind, the paper embarks with a brief description of the legal, policy and institutional framework in the Philippines that pertain to the implementation of socioeconomic rights relevant to universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services. In doing so, the paper will be able to identify the legal, regulatory and policy opportunities and challenges to attain the aforementioned target in the Philippines. Next, it examines the practical implications of a human rights-based approach to achieve universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services in the domestic legal regime. Accordingly, the proposition of couching universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services in the human rights language and the role of the judiciary, particularly the Supreme Court, in realising this are analysed in the Philippines for the first time as a scholarly exercise. The paper concludes that as long as energy poverty and inequality persist, a human rights-based approach to access affordable, reliable and modern energy services remains significant and relevant where the Supreme Court is envisioned to play a vital role in catalysing legal reforms for a better Philippines where the struggles, concerns and basic needs of those who have less – in some instances none – become the clamour and claim of all.
Keywords: Energy access
JEL Classification: K32
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation