Their names are Rashida, Anne, and Carlos. Like millions of others, they are suffering from the adverse health impacts of pollution, being forcefully relocated due to the impacts of climate change, or losing a relative who was assassinated for standing up for the ecosystems on which his or her community depends. For them, there is no question that the right to a healthy and sustainable environment is as fundamental a prerequisite for human dignity as any other right.
When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted 70 years ago, its drafters had little awareness of this truth. As the world emerged from the darkness of the second world war and as the scale of environmental degradation was not comparable to that of today, environmental considerations were not explicitly addressed in the Declaration that laid the foundation for the United Nations.
In the following decades, governments and international institutions came to the progressive realization that the effective enjoyment of human rights depends on a safe, clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. Several key international human rights treaties recognize specific aspects of it, such as the right to education on environmental matters or the importance of environmental conditions to the exercise of the right to health.
At the national level, an increasing number of countries have amended their constitutions to provide for the protection of the right to a healthy environment. More than 100 national constitutions now include such an explicit provision, and this number keeps increasing. In fact, no social or economic issue has ever spread as quickly among national constitutions.
The right to a healthy environment is also a key to several regional treaties, including the African Charter of People’s and Human Rights and the Aarhus and Escazú Conventions protecting environmental democracy in Europe and Latin America, respectively. And just a few months ago, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights released a landmark advisory opinion recognizing that all men and women have the right to a healthy environment. Taking these instruments into consideration, the right to a healthy environment is now protected in more than three quarters of the world’s nations.
Despite this irresistible global trend, the United Nations has so far failed to take decisive steps towards the global recognition of this right, remaining for now on the side-lines of history on this issue. The absence of such a global recognition weakens the entire human rights project by leaving a gaping hole in the protection regime. This is why States must remedy this situation by taking steps towards the global recognition of the right to a healthy and sustainable environment.
The purpose of such global recognition is not to create any “new” right or to change the purpose of existing human rights frameworks. As highlighted in the previous paragraphs, it is now widely recognized that a healthy environmental is a prerequisite for the enjoyment of human rights.
Nor is it to define the scope of States’ and corporations’ responsibilities in relation to the right to a healthy environment. This is already being accomplished through countless judicial decisions, human rights institutions, and legislative provisions around the world and synthesized by several authoritative institutions, including by the former UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment.
However, global recognition would add significant value by confirming once and for all that the protection of the right to a healthy environment is equally as important as the protection of other human rights. It would elevate the urgency and priority of preventing environmental degradation among other public policies.
Such recognition would also contribute to strengthening legal remedies for those whose rights are undermined by reckless corporate behavior and by inadequate public policies. Further, it would confirm the legitimacy of those standing to protect the land and ecosystems on which their communities depend.
Today, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment will formally propose that the UN General Assembly recognize the right to a healthy and sustainable environment, highlighting practical options that could be considered to ensure the swift recognition of this right at the global level, for instance through a dedicated UN General Assembly Resolution and through the ongoing negotiations initiated by the French proposal for a Global Pact for the Environment.
In the context of shrinking civil society space, escalating repression against environmental human rights defenders, growing recognition of the threats of chemicals to human and environmental health, and the message of climate urgency delivered by the new IPCC Special Report, this proposal offers a unique and timely opportunity for States to take initiative to protect the rights of their constituents and place human rights at the core of sustainable development.
As the previous UN Special Rapporteur Professor John Knox noted in his final report, it is impossible to resist an idea whose time has come. Now that the Special Rapporteur has broken the ice with his convincing report, the UN General Assembly can no longer stand by in this debate.
By Sébastien Duyck, Senior Attorney
Originally posted on October 25, 2018