This interactive event invited speakers and the audience to truly reimagine humanity’s relationship with nature through an exploration of the linkages between human rights and biodiversity. The event, which built upon the recent recognition of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a human right by Human Rights Council resolution 48/13, shared ideas for a post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework that promotes rights-based action to protect biodiversity, including through participatory, inclusive, transparent and accountable implementation that safeguards Indigenous Peoples’ rights and ways of life.

New OHCHR research on integrating human rights in national biodiversity strategies and action plans and rights-based approaches to conservation finance was presented to inform an interactive discussion. Other objectives of the session included to:

  • Build momentum for integration of human rights, including the right to a healthy environment, in the development and implementation of the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework;
  • Increase awareness of the linkages between human rights and biodiversity; and
  • Explore the implications of recognition of the human right to a healthy environment for biodiversity and conservation action.

Integrating Human Rights in National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans

Therese ARNESEN | Human Rights Officer, Environment and Climate Change, OHCHR

The report presented is a working draft of the OHCHR report, “Integrating Human Rights in National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans”, recognizing the research, analysis and writing done by Clarice Wambua.

Setting the Scene

  • Referring to the adoption of HRC Resolution 48/13, it provided a momentum for the integration of human rights, including the right to healthy environments, development, and the implementation of the post-2020 GBF. The HRBA to biodiversity is a tool that is normatively based on international human rights law and standards, operationally directed to promote and protect human rights.
  • In our setting today, the HRBA helps promote the sustainability of biodiversity action, empowering people, especially the most marginalized and those in vulnerable situations, to participate in policy formulation, and to hold accountable those who have a duty to act.
  • The NBSAPs are the principal planning tool for Parties to the Convention, and offers a unique opportunity for human rights to be included in the foundations of biodiversity conservation and management.

Key Findings of the Report

  • We set out to provide guidance to states and other stakeholders and how to plan for and implement rights-based biodiversity.
    • First, we outline the interlinkages between human rights and biodiversity: explaining how biodiversity is necessary for the enjoyment of human rights, and how the realization of human rights is beneficial for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, while biodiversity loss can result in human rights violations and thereby exacerbate existing inequalities.
    • Second, integrating human rights in biodiversity planning is essential both for biodiversity conservation and management to be successful as it enables human rights-based action to enhance the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and it allows the protection of human rights and the action undertaken to do so to benefit both people and planet.
      • Allowing the synergies between biodiversity and human rights to be better understood and to be enhanced also assists in playing a role in the transformation required to attain the SDGs.
    • Finally, the HRBA to NBSAPs specifically ensures that biodiversity is protected in a non-discriminatory inclusive and participatory manner. The report aims to provide guidance to member States and other stakeholders on how this can be done: how can human rights considerations be incorporated into biodiversity planning? Our findings and belief show that this is best done when human rights are explicitly integrated in explicit terms in the language of rights and the corresponding obligations?
  • The basis of our report is an analysis of 186 NBSAPs from State parties. It looks at both direct and indirect references to human rights and includes specific considerations that have been given to groups and persons in vulnerable situations.
  • Rather few states make it explicit or make direct references to human rights. Majority of NBSAPS factor in human rights related issues and use indirect references to related principles and concepts. As a whole and as it stands today, the NBSAPs really fail to adequately integrate human rights in biodiversity policymaking and planning. Some of our findings are positive and enlightening:
    • 44 NBSAPs directly refer to at least one human right, while 83% of these have taken into consideration persons, groups and peoples in vulnerable situations. 69% refer to local communities, as the NBSAP of Ethiopia does.
    • 24% refers to indigenous peoples, such as Australia’s NBSAP. 49% references women, such as Nigeria, while youth and children are referenced in respectively 22% and 24% of the NBSAPs, where Bahamas references youth and Azerbaijan specifically refers to children.
    • The right to a healthy environment is the right that is most frequently referenced, as it appears in 15 percent of NBSAPs, such as those of Liberia, Mongolia Nicaragua, Norway and Turkey, while 28% of NBSAPs have indirect references to this.
      • The implications of incorporating the right to healthy environment in NBSAPs would be to further strengthen, with an in-depth exploration and elaboration in the NBSAPs, of what this right means, what it means for the country, what it means in the context of biodiversity, and how this can be attained.
  • We have a few good practices in terms of directly incorporating substantive rights.
    • Guatemala’s directly affirms the State’s commitment to guaranteeing the right to life. Switzerland mentions that it’s important to protect biodiversity as this guarantees certain rights, including those to clean air and water.
    • Some of the indirect references come in the context of references to domestic laws and policies or court decisions.
    • Indonesia’s for example reference the right to culture through cross-referencing domestic law that contains elements guaranteeing these specific rights. São Tomé and Príncipe references the country’s Constitution that safeguards the right to housing. India’s refers to the right to education through a domestic law that provides for action plans in the education sector.
  • In terms of procedural rights, 7% of NBSAPs directly reference the right to access to information, 7% directly references the right to participation, and only 2% of NBSAPs references the right to access legal remedies.

Recommendations

  • We recommend NBSAPs to expressly articulate in human rights language the entitlements of rights holders and the obligations of duty bearers.
    • States as the primary duty bearers should really incorporate their human rights in obligations in NBSAPs both in terms of procedural rights (facilitating public participation, access to information, access to justice) and in terms of substantive rights (right to life, right to a healthy environment, right to culture, right to food and health, adequate housing, self-determination, right to safe drinking water and an adequate standard of living).
  • The whole process of developing NBSAPs should be participatory.
    • We think that there should be a way for States as the primary duty bearers, at the outset when they set up the human rights obligations, to address responsibilities of businesses related to biodiversity laws and the related human rights harms.
  • Finally, NBSAPs should also incorporate effective human rights monitoring, reporting and accountability mechanisms. This should be implemented and maintained throughout the lifespan of the policies.
    • Remembering that NBSAPs are not an ending themselves, they are just the beginning of a long-term process of participatory biodiversity planning and action and that their implementation should really be a process of continuous dialogue with rights-holders.

Conclusion

  • We’re proposing this guidance to inform parties preparing their NBSAPs following the adoption of the post-2020 GBF, as the global community seeks through the to stop biodiversity loss. It is key to recognize the interdependence of human rights and our environment, the importance of realizing the right to a healthy, clean and sustainable environment for everyone, and again rights-based biodiversity action, which is necessary to effectively protect both people and planet. Integrating human rights in the development context and the implementation of NBSAPs is really a crucial policy tool.
  • Another guidance developed at the UN Human Rights, together with our partners at UNEP, provides a set of key messages on human rights and biodiversity which can provide further policy guidance for rights-based biodiversity action.

You can read the panel discussion here

 

 

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Tags: Integrating Human Rights in the Future of Biodiversity Action