The link between environmental rights, environmental protection and the courts has become more prominent in recent times, with courts and judges being described as the ultimate vanguard of broad environmental rights, and the rights being described as game-changing legal tools over which judges have substantial power. However, given the infancy of environmental rights and the slow rate at which they have been developing generally (and in Africa in particular), scholars have observed that there is a knowledge gap with respect to the identification of the specific tasks and roles that courts have to perform when it comes to advancing environmental rights, and their overall net contribution to advancing the type of interests that environmental rights seek to promote. Because courts often have to balance the competing interests of environmental protection and development (which is acutely needed in most African states), this article seeks to identify the role courts have been playing in an effort to protect the environment solely based on a number of African case law.

环境权利，环境保护和法院之间的联系已成为近年来较为突出，与法院和法官被描述为终极先锋的广泛的环境权利，被描述为权利游戏-改变了其法官都具有相当的法律工具功率。但是，鉴于环境权的起步阶段以及环境权的总体发展速度缓慢（特别是在非洲），学者们注意到，在确定法院所承担的具体任务和角色方面存在知识鸿沟在促进环境权利方面的表现，以及它们对促进环境权利寻求促进的利益类型的整体净贡献。由于法院通常必须权衡环境保护和发展的竞争利益（在大多数非洲国家中迫切需要），因此本文旨在确定法院在仅仅基于一些非洲人的努力来保护环境中所发挥的作用判例法。