Abstract
Greenwashing may affect more than a consumer’s economic decision. By presenting environmental impacts in a false, selective or unverifiable manner, it may also impair access to environmental information and the ability of individuals to act on that information. Turkish legal scholarship has mainly analysed greenwashing through misleading advertising, unfair commercial practices and private law liability. This article approaches the issue primarily from a human rights perspective. It examines the procedural dimension of the right to a healthy environment, including access to information, participation and effective remedies, in light of the environmental positive-obligation case law of the European Court of Human Rights, the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and Advisory Opinion OC-32/25 of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The article argues that not every misleading environmental claim constitutes a direct human rights violation. Yet the systematic distortion or concealment of environmental information has independent significance for the State duty to protect and the corporate responsibility to respect human rights. Turkish private-law rules on defects, unfair competition, reliance and tort are therefore treated as complementary remedial mechanisms rather than the normative centre of the analysis.