The Domestication of the Right to a Healthy Environment

Started in January 2022

Context

In 2021 and 2022, the United Nations Human Rights Council and UN General Assembly endorsed resolutions recognizing the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. While broadly lauded as a breakthrough for environmental protection, experts remain divided on whether a non-binding resolution will be able to overcome a lack of consensus and vested interests within and between states or mark a critical step towards tighter environmental accountability and enforcement. One point of agreement is that, from a pragmatic viewpoint, emphasis should target state-level implementation of these resolutions. Indeed, the urgency of the climate crisis demands a time-sensitive response, and domestic laws and policies are the most effective and expedient tools by which to challenge ecologically harmful projects and policies.

This begs important questions about the factors that have enabled or dissuaded states from integrating environmental rights into domestic law.

Objectives

This project will start by identifying what enabling conditions correlate with or explain a state’s decision to recognize the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment in domestic law, taking into account variables such as risk exposure, market impact, litigation, governance, civil society activity, voter opinion, economic reasoning and other factors. Variables that are found to be significant will be cross-tested in countries that have not recognized environmental rights in domestic law, to validate the findings.

It will also examine the impact of this recognition on corporate policy, planning and decision-making with a view to better understanding the enabling conditions for cleaner manufacturing, agricultural and infrastructure projects.

The research will ultimately tackle the broader questions around the impact of this recognition –specifically the efficacy of soft law on formal accountability processes, and how this right has promoted a more integrated understanding of environmental challenges.

NEWS AND UPCOMING EVENTS

Open dump's view from the sky News

New Publication Details the Contours and Next Steps for the Right to a Healthy Environment

9 January 2023

Our new publication Human Rights and the Environment explores the implications of the recently recognised right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, with a focus on the UN Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly.

Read more >

Scavengers Burning Trash, Tondo Garbage Dump, Manila Philippines News

New Research on the Right to a Healthy Environment

22 March 2022

This project forms part of our research cluster on sustainable development that aims to explore the linkages between sustainable development, the protection of the environment, climate change and the branches of international law that protect the rights of the most vulnerable.

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RESEARCHERS

Picture of Christophe Golay

Christophe Golay

Senior Research Fellow

Dr Christophe Golay's expertise relates to economic, social and cultural rights, the right to food and the rights of peasants.

OUTPUT

Detailing the Contours and Next Steps for the Right to a Healthy Environment

Building on the recent recognition of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, the first phase of this research – completed in 2022 – aimed to mainstream this right and the protection it affords in the work of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) and Geneva-based human rights mechanisms.

Published in December 2022, our briefing Human Rights and the Environmentand its research brief The Right to a Healthy Environment detail the contours of this right and the relationship between human rights and the environment, formulating concrete recommendations on its mainstreaming in the work and resolutions of the UNGA and the UN Human Rights Council (HRC).

At a side event during the 51st session of the HRC – co-organized with the permanent missions of Costa Rica, the Maldives, Morocco, Switzerland and Slovenia to the UN in Geneva – diplomats, representatives from NGOs and international organizations and experts also discussed the implementation of this right and the role of the HRC in this.

Publications

Cover of the publication

Right to a Healthy Environment

December 2022

Megan Donald

The Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights

Download >

Cover of the publication

Briefing N° 21: Human Rights and the Environment

December 2022

Megan Donald

The Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights

Download > Download >

Past Events

Promoting and Protecting the Right to a Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment

14 September 2022, 19:00-20:30

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