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Monday, October 21, 2024
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© 2024 Ayu Maulani

On July 28, 2022, the United Nations General Assembly recognized a groundbreaking human right: the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. This monumental decision marks a victory for environmental and human rights activists worldwide, but the real challenge lies ahead in its implementation.

Last September, the Environment and ESCR Working Group of the ESCR-Net published this brief, which analyzes the history of the right to a healthy environment, its significance for communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis, the core principles and state obligations that must guide its implementation, as well as the collective struggles that members of ESCR-Net are advocating for at national, regional, and international levels related to this right.

For decades, the climate crisis has disproportionately impacted marginalized communities, particularly Indigenous Peoples, women, and grassroots activists, many of whom face environmental degradation and violence fueled by extractivism and neoliberal policies. In this blog, we’ll explore the highlights of the document to see why the right to a healthy environment is vital, how it can be realized, and the collective demands needed to create systemic change.

If you’re interested in diving deeper into the details and historical background of this right, read the full brief here.

Why is This Right Important?

Global recognition of the right to a healthy environment is the result of persistent advocacy by civil society groups, progressive governments, and frontline communities who continue to resist powerful interests. The significance of this right goes beyond environmental protection—it’s about justice for those who have suffered due to the exploitative actions of corporations and governments that prioritize profit over peoples.

From the Amazon rainforest to the deserts of Jordan, from rural Colombia to the Ogiek people in Kenya, communities across the world have long asserted that a healthy environment is essential for the realization of economic, social, and cultural rights. Without a sustainable environment, other basic rights such as access to food, clean water, health, and life itself are jeopardized.

What Does This Right Mean for the Frontline Communities?

For Indigenous Peoples, the right to a healthy environment is tied directly to their cultural identity, lands, and traditional ways of life. Fulfillment of their right to a healthy environment helps ensure their right to self-determination and protects their territories from harmful projects. Similarly, for grassroots feminist and women’s movements, this right is crucial for addressing gender inequities embedded in climate and environmental policies. Women are often caretakers of the land and suffer the worst consequences of environmental destruction.

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Core Principles to Implement the Right

Implementation of the right to a healthy environment must reflect both procedural and substantive elements. Here are some guiding principles:

  1. Gender equity: Environmental policies must recognize women’s role in addressing climate change and ensure their voices are central to decision-making.
  2. Intergenerational justice: Current generations have a responsibility to protect the environment for future generations.
  3. Accountability of the global polluters: Wealthy countries and corporations responsible for much of the world’s environmental damage must be held accountable and pay for their fair share in order to achieve climate justice.
  4. Community participation: Climate related policies and decision making processes must enable the frontline communities to meaningfully participate in decisions affecting their environment, ensuring that policies reflect their needs and realities.

These principles are discussed in detail in the policy brief, providing a robust foundation for understanding state obligations and the role of civil society.

Collective Demands for Change

To ensure meaningful implementation of this right, grassroots movements and civil society groups have put forward several political demands:

  • Holding polluters accountable: Corporations, particularly in the fossil fuel industry, must stop their destructive business practices, and countries must reject false climate solutions that do not address the root causes of the climate crisis.
  • Protecting environmental and human rights defenders: Every year, hundreds of environmental defenders are murdered and criminalized for their activism. Governments must take urgent steps to protect those standing on the frontlines of environmental justice.
  • Promoting food sovereignty and biodiversity: Agroecological practices that emphasize food sovereignty and environmental sustainability must replace destructive industrial agricultural models.
  • Ensuring climate financing: The flow of financial resources from wealthy to the Global South countries must be adequate, equitable, and accountable. It should directly reach those who need it most—communities at the forefront of climate devastation.

The Road Ahead

While the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is now globally recognized, its full realization depends on transformative action. Governments, corporations, and international institutions must abandon exploitative development models and create space for community-led, peoples-centered solutions. Environmental justice cannot exist without addressing historical inequalities, corporate accountability, and centering the voices of those most impacted by the climate crisis.

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© 2024 Ayu Maulani