Environmental rights

Environmental rights

Introduction 

The prevailing industrial, input-intensive and mono-culture agriculture and food production system exacerbates climate change and harms communities and the environment. Social movements have been denouncing this destructive food production model for a long time.

Environmental rights directly relate to the human right to adequate food and nutrition (RtFN), given the linkages between food, land, territories, and a healthy environment. The deepening global ecological crisis highlights the importance of fertile soils, clean water, wild fish stocks, forests and pollinators for realizing the RtFN of current and future generations. The term “environmental rights” refers to the interaction between human rights and the environment. International environmental law has rapidly evolved since the seminal 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. Since then, States have elaborated a large number of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), reformed their constitutions to recognize the right to a healthy environment, and begun to establish environmental regulatory frameworks and institutions. Since the 1992 Earth Summit, the efforts at integrating these two fields of law and policy have been described as the “greening of human rights.” This process focuses on clarifying the environmental dimensions of protected human rights.

States’ obligations

The RtFN is essential to achieving social, environmental and climate justice. Sustainability is a key component of the normative content of the RtFN.[35] This opens the door for an examination of environmental impacts that affect the sustainability and the ability of communities and individuals to effectively enjoy the RtFN. The interrelation between environmental rights and the RtFN is increasingly expanding and includes, for instance: the impact of highly hazardous pesticides and industrial food systems, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and biological diversity, seeds and traditional knowledge, hazardous waste and soils, climate change and greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) from land use, artisanal fisheries and conservation, forests and carbon sequestration.

Under their RtFN obligations, states must, respect the rights of Indigenous Peoples and other small-scale food producers, including traditional fishers and pastoralists/livestock keepers to their ancestral lands, natural resources and traditional land use. In this sense, all potentially affected communities must be meaningfully involved in all stages of decision-making processes, and their right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) must be guaranteed when projects or policies with possible detrimental impacts on the environment are being planned. Protecting small-scale food producers, including traditional fishers, and livestock keepers that manage and use ecosystems sustainably from natural resource-grabbing and environmental destruction is key in order to promote diverse, fresh and healthy food.

States’ legislative frameworks should adhere to the precautionary principle and include measures for the prevention and mitigation of environmental damage. For example, states should have measures and regulations in place to prevent and mitigate water and air pollution, to limit the accumulation of contaminants, and to strictly regulate the use of agrochemicals, including by banning the trade, distribution and use of highly hazardous pesticides. Effective risk management systems as well as environmental monitoring mechanisms should be in place to prevent environmental damage and harm to health throughout food systems.

States’ RtFN obligations regarding the environment also requires them to align their finance, investment, economic, development and other policies with the protection of the environment. States’ extraterritorial obligations have particular importance in this context as many of these policies can have impacts on environmental rights abroad.

Providing access to judicial remedies, as well as redress, which includes compensation, restitution, and restoration for people and communities affected by environmental damage is vital. Such remedy mechanisms should also be made available for affected communities from other countries.

Finally, states have to guarantee a safe and enabling environment for the persons and organizations that promote and defend human rights in environmental matters.

List of key words

  • Safe, clean, healthy, and sustainable environment
  • Ecosystems
  • Environmental information, participation, and decision-making
  • Environmental policies
  • Environmental destruction
  • Prevention, precaution
  • National determined contributions
  • Mitigation, Adaptation, Resilience
  • Liability, Compensation, Restoration, Remediation, Redress, Restitution
  • Environmental Human Rights Defenders
  • Conservation, preservation, regeneration,
  • Biological Diversity
  • Climate change/ climate justice
  • Agroecology
  • Collective knowledge, indigenous knowledge, and practices
  • Seeds, GMOs, monocultures
  • Agro-chemicals and highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs)
  • Pollution
  • Safe and healthy working conditions

Main instruments[36]

Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEA)

There are several hundred Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEA) in force.[37] One way these agreements can be broadly understood is according to their regulatory approach: MEAs addressing the global commons, MEAs protecting resources that are under the jurisdiction of states, such as biodiversity or the prevention of desertification, and MEAs regulating the international movement (or trade) of products that pose a risk to the environment and human health.

Global commons

States jurisdiction

International movement of products

International human rights instruments and guidelines

Africa 

Europe

Americas

Asia and the Pacific

Guiding Questions

Environmental information, participation, and decision-making

  • Does your state provide support for groups facing discrimination, e.g. Indigenous Peoples, peasants, women, youth, and other marginalized people, to access environmental information?

    • Are there environment-related structures and service provision mechanisms in place at all levels of government?

  • Are there specific participation quota or other mechanisms to ensure women’s and other marginalized groups’ participation in environmental decision-making processes and spaces? When communities speak different languages, is participation conducted in such languages so as to guarantee their effective participation?

    • Does the state provide a national report on the state of the environment, including on the extraterritorial impact of its policies on the environment, where relevant?
    • Is disaggregated data available on the groups most affected by environmental destruction (e.g. children, women, Indigenous Peoples, Dalits, landless, migrant workers, and other marginalized groups)?
    • Are there robust safeguards in place to protect against conflicts of interest (CoI) resulting from inappropriate relationships with and influence of the private sector jeopardizing the public interest and human rights orientation of public policy related to the environment?
    • Do communities have their right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) guaranteed when projects/policies impacting their environment are being planned?

Access to justice

  • This includes people impacted by all forms of environmental issues such as pesticide use, pollution, environmental projects, loss of biodiversity, etc.

    • Does your state support marginalized and discriminated communities in accessing remedies?
    • Do such mechanisms guarantee redress, including compensation, restitution, restoration, etc.? Are these mechanisms gender-responsive?
    • Does the legal system allow for precautionary measures to prevent or mitigate environmental damage?

Environmental human rights defenders

    • Does your state guarantee a safe and enabling environment for the persons and organizations that promote and defend human rights in environmental matters?
    • If environmental human rights defenders are attacked, does the state effectively and timely investigate and punish those attacks?
    • Are environmental human rights defenders from marginalized and discriminated communities recognized and listened to as well?

Biodiversity and sustainable management of resources

  • (see also module on food sovereignty)

    • Are there policies and strategies in place to protect and promote biodiversity and agroecology? Do peasants have access to such policy programs?
    • Are local foods and seeds protected? Are peasant and indigenous seed systems legally recognized? Do farmers have the right to save, use, exchange, and sell their farm-saved seeds?
    • Are there policies/programs to save and promote water biodiversity and aquatic life?
    • Do people have access to information on GMOs? Does the state apply the precautionary principle regarding genetic modifications of living organisms? Does it consider the phasing out and banning of GMOs for cultivation, as well as for human and animal consumption?
    • Are traditional agrarian, fishing, livestock keeping, and pastoral systems of Indigenous Peoples and small-scale food producers that manage and use ecosystems sustainably protected and promoted?
    • Are pastoralists’ mobility, access to land, water, markets and services, and adaptive land management protected, including in trans-border areas?

  • For example, are tenure rights of small-scale fishing communities protected?

    • Are measures for forest conservation, regeneration of native forests and restoration of degraded forests, as well as the development of agroforestry systems in place?
    • Are conservation and regeneration measures based on peoples’ participation and self-determination, and are they grounded in human rights? Are small-scale food producers protected from natural resource grabbing in the context of environmental projects and environmental destruction?
    • Are intensive mono-cropping, the use of agro- chemicals and antimicrobials in agriculture expanding? What is the state of the use of antibiotics for animal growth and aquaculture? Are the marine environment and wild fish stocks properly protected from intensive aquaculture?

Pollution

    • Are there measures in place to prevent and mitigate water and air pollution, including that created by households?

  • Is water quality preserved for domestic, agricultural and food-related uses through targeted incentives and disincentives?

    • Do people have mechanisms to denounce cases of pollution, including in trans-border cases?
    • Are there laws regulating pollution by industries/companies? Do these establish liability mechanisms for companies?
    • Are there regulations in place to limit the accumulation of contaminants to safeguard human health, and facilitate remediation of contaminated soils that exceed these levels? Does the state take necessary measures to ensure that the management of wastes is consistent with the protection of human health and the environment?
    • Have individuals or communities lost their jobs due to changes, destruction, or pollution of the ecosystem and the natural resources they rely on for securing their livelihoods? Do such job losses have differentiated impacts on certain groups of the population?
    • Are there regulations in place to prevent air pollution, including beyond borders?

Pesticides and chemical fertilizers

    • What is the state’s Nationally Determined Contribution to address climate change? Does it entail agroecology?
    • What are the impacts of climate change on different population groups in the country? What measures are being taken to mitigate such impacts?

  • Do local governments have a disaster risk management plan in place? How do people benefit from such a plan?

    • What mechanisms and processes are in place to ensure inclusive participation in Disaster Risk Management and post-disaster support (relief, rehabilitation as well as environmental safeguards and entitlements)?

Climate change

    • What is the state’s Nationally Determined Contribution to address climate change? Does it entail agroecology?
    • What are the impacts of climate change on different population groups in the country? What measures are being
      taken to mitigate such impacts?

  • Do local governments have a disaster risk management plan in place? How do people benefit from such a plan?

    • What mechanisms and processes are in place to ensure inclusive participation in Disaster Risk Management and
      post-disaster support (relief, rehabilitation as well as environmental safeguards and entitlements)?

Where to find answers to the questions

Information relevant to the questions may be found in a range of places, including the following:

  •  Government environmental agency or ministry: These institutions may have public information systems, issue reports and news releases, and other sources of information.
  •  Laws, regulations, and jurisprudence: National and international databases may help establish baseline information of legal requirements.
  •  Codes of corporate conduct and reports: These instruments may include information on occupational health issues.
  • Pollutant release and transfer registries: These instruments may help access pollution data.
  • Interviews with community members and workers, including specific interviews with women or other groups facing discrimination: This methodology can help amplify community voices and testimonies, as well as establish or even uncover facts.
  •  Press interviews and contacts with journalists: Specialized journalists may have a wealth of information on the situation regarding environmental rights in a specific region or place.
  •  Academic sources (academics doing participatory research on the topic)
  •  Traditional community-based institutions such as mothers’ groups, religious groups, farmers’ groups etc.

Useful resources on the topic

Civil society organizations

Inter-governmental organizations

Environmental rights

Nepal: High Court orders cement industry to stop pollution immediately

In Nepal, numerous cement industries are having a negative impact on the health and wellbeing of local communities due to the drying up of water resources, the decline in agricultural production, and environment pollution because of dust and smoke. In 2021, in their struggle to live in a clean environment and to protect their right to water and food as enshrined in the Constitution of Nepal and in the Right to Food and Food Sovereignty Act, affected communities filed a writ petition against the operations of Ghorahi Cement Industry and the District Administration Office in the High Court of Tulsipur, Dang District, Lumbini Province, with the support of FIAN Nepal. The High Court issued an interim order to Ghorahi Cement Industry to immediately stop environment pollution and use appropriate mitigation measures. It also ordered the company to follow the recommendation of the inspection report of the Ministry of Population and Environment (Department of Environment) to use equipment such as filters and water sprinklers to control the adverse effects on the environment.

“We are affected by the industry and its pollution. Our water sources have started drying up and agriculture production was low. Our right to food is violated”, said one of the writ petitioners. “There were many negative impacts on human health, agricultural production and water sources when the industry didn’t fulfil the minimum standards. We have been compelled to go to the court after a series of advocacy activities were ignored by the company. The decision of the High Court justified our claim”.