Human Right to the Environment

Exposition of Motives:

1. Human rights and fundamental freedoms being indivisible, the full realization of civil and political rights without the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights is impossible.
2. The human right to the environment, which takes part of economic, social, and cultural rights, have come to complement and reinforce civil and political rights and economic, social, and cultural rights.
3. Sixty-nine years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and fifty-one years after the two international covenants for social, economic, and cultural rights, and for civil and political rights adopted and opened for signature, and for ratification and accession by the General Assembly of the United Nations in its Resolution 2200 A (XXXI) of 16 December 1966, the time has come to devote a third International Covenant to the human right to the environment.
4. A third International Covenant for the right to the environment is even more indispensable as globalization and poverty challenge human rights and require enhanced consideration of the environment. The General Assembly of the United Nations has specifically insisted on this evolution in its Resolution 69/173 of 18 December 2004 on Globalization and its impact on the full enjoyment of all human rights, 69/183 of 18 December 2014 on Human rights and extreme poverty and 70/153 of 17 December 2015 on the Enhancement of international cooperation in the field of human rights.
5. The economic, social, and cultural effects of environmental damage on human rights can sometimes have greater impact on vulnerable persons and communities. Autochthonous and local communities are most victimized by environmental damage because of their greater dependence on nature.
6. Multiple threats to the environment, resulting from all forms of pollution, climate change, and loss of biodiversity, require an increased resilience of humanity. This resilience is based in particular on international human rights law and international humanitarian law which are now indivisible with the human right to the environment.
7. The human right to the environment has become in 45 years a quasi- customary obligation of international law, given its international and national recognition.
8. All of the international United Nations conferences on the environment and development have admitted by consensus the importance of the human right to a healthy and ecologically balanced environment permitting people to live with dignity and well-being: Stockholm Declaration of 1972, Rio Declaration of 1992, Johannesburg Declaration of 2002, the Rio Declaration of 2012.
9. Among the universal Goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 2015 is the environmental dimension of sustainable development. The Special Rapporteur for Human Rights and the Environment has emphasized the importance of new Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) for human rights and the environment.
10. The General Assembly of the United Nations has adopted resolutions in particular on the right to water in 2010 and 2015, on the right to food in 2014, on living in harmony with nature, and on access to reliable and modern energy services. It has also adopted in 1982 the World Charter for Nature. Nature and the environment being indivisible, some jurisdictions recognize the rights of nature, giving it juridical personality. The right to the environment complements the rights of nature,10 as was suggested in the Rio Declaration on the Environment and Development, Principle 1: human beings are “entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature.”
11. Several international and regional conventions for the environment have created a judicially recognized a new human right to the environment,11 as well as a convention with universal jurisdiction.
12. Resolutions and reports of the Commission on Human Rights and later the Human Rights Council have on several occasions addressed the human right to the environment in its diverse aspects since 1988.
13. The place of the human right to the environment at the heart of human rights was again reinforced with the nomination in 2012, by the Human Rights Council, of an independent expert, who became Special Rapporteur on the Issue of Human Rights Obligations Relating to the Enjoyment of a Safe, Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment.
14. The International Court of Justice, in its advisory opinion of 8 July 1996 on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons, found that “the environment is not an abstraction but represents the living space, the quality of life and the very health of human beings, including generations unborn.”
15. In parallel with these diverse forms of recognition of international human rights, more than 150 national constitutions have included the environment as a social obligation. Among them, more than 95 have recognized the human right to the environment as a new fundamental constitutional right. In the absence of constitutional provisions, several constitutional courts or supreme courts have also recognized a right to the environment.
16. The recognition of the human right to a healthy environment at the international level will reinforce the obligations relating to peace, security, rule of law, political stability, and democracy and will reinforce the rights of humanity. Moreover, the right to development in the context of the establishment of a new international economic order is indissoluble with protection for the environment.
17. Several initiatives have been taken toward establishing a 3d international covenant on human rights. Among those that have had formal recognition, the proposal of Mme. Ksentini, the Special Rapporteur for the United Nations on the human right to the environment deserves special attention. At the time of its publication in 1994, attention was only beginning to be paid to the relationship between the environment and human rights. Twenty-three years later, the time has come to adopt a 3d International Covenant dedicated to the environment, recognized as a fundamental human right.
18. Taking into account the invitation of the United Nations to promote new ideas and principles in the area of human rights to protect and make more effective environmental rights, and pursuant to United Nations General Assembly Resolution 53/144, the International Center for Comparative Environmental Law, as an organ of civil society, proposes the following International Covenant.