The Right to a Healthy Environment

Yale Ecology Forum are happy to share “The Right to a Healthy Environment: A User’s Guide” by David R. Boyd. This guide explores the resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2022 to universally recognize the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. This recognition means more accountability from governments to ensure we live in a world with a safe and stable climate, a toxic-free environment, clean air, access to safe water and adequate sanitation, healthy and sustainably produced food, and thriving biodiversity and ecosystems. See resources about the human right to a healthy environment and the rights of nature here .

Foreword
“The UN General Assembly resolution recognizing the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment demonstrates that countries are in solidarity with billions of people suffering under the weight of the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste. It will help people stand up for their right to a safe climate, their right to breathe clean air and their rights to access clean and safe water, adequate food, healthy ecosystems and nontoxic environments.

So, the recognition of this right is a victory we should celebrate. My thanks to Member States and to the thousands of civil society organizations and indigenous peoples’ groups, and tens of thousands of young people who advocated relentlessly for this right. But now we must build on this victory and implement the right, because the triple planetary crisis is a huge threat to present and future generations. If nations implement this right fully, it will change so much – by empowering action on the triple planetary crisis, providing a more predictable and consistent global regulatory environment for businesses, and protecting those who defend nature.

If you are reading this User’s Guide, you are probably already familiar with the planetary environmental crisis that humanity has created – the climate emergency, collapse of biodiversity, pervasive pollution of air, water and soil, worsening water scarcity, desertification and degradation of land, the unhealthy, unsustainable and exploitative food systems, and the surge in zoonotic diseases spilling over from animals into humans. Other threats are emerging, including microplastics and forever chemicals, both of which are found in our bodies with uncertain but undoubtedly adverse consequences.

 

These inter-connected catastrophes are undermining the life support system that humans and millions of other species depend upon. The planetary crisis has profound impacts on human health, ecosystem health and the ability of billions of people, both today and tomorrow, to enjoy a broad range of human rights. Among these rights are the rights to life, health, food, water, sanitation, cultural rights, the rights of the child and of course the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. The adverse impacts fall disproportionately upon the shoulders of people in challenging situations of poverty, vulnerability and marginalization, creating climate injustices and environmental injustices.

The root causes of these interconnected crises are economic, political, social, legal and cultural systems that prioritize extractivism, profit and economic growth over people, nature, human rights and community. It is shocking that the richest one per cent of humanity generates the same total amount of greenhouse gas emissions as the poorest 66 per cent! Business-driven overconsumption by wealthy nations and wealthy people combined with a global population that surpassed eight billion–on its way to ten billion by 2050–has created a situation in which the cumulative impacts of human activity exceed numerous planetary boundaries. By mid-August, our society is consuming more resources than the Earth can sustainably produce in a year, resulting in a grim situation called overshoot.