Right to a Healthy Environment

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Context

• Canberra could become the first place in Australia to give people a legal right to a healthy environment.

Details

• The Human Rights (Healthy Environment) Amendment Bill 2023 was introduced in the ACT Legislative Assembly.
• It seeks to address the impacts of climate change and shore up the environment for future generations.
• It said a healthy environment included "clean air, a safe climate, access to safe water and to healthy and sustainably produced food …. [with] healthy biodiversity and ecosystems".
• The Australian government said the law would require ACT authorities to consider the environment when making decisions or carrying out functions.
• But any breaches of the yet-to-be-passed law will not attract penalties for some time.

Significance

• The United Nations (UN) General Assembly last year agreed that access to a clean and healthy environment was a universal human right.
• The bill was in step with overseas efforts to preserve healthy environments.
• The legislation reflects growing international consensus and practice around the role and importance of environmental protections.
• The resolution was in part designed to help member states be able to advance climate policies domestically.

Right to a Healthy Environment

• The right to a healthy environment or the right to a sustainable and healthy environment is a human right advocated by human rights organizations and environmental organizations to protect the ecological systems that provide human health.
• The right was acknowledged by the United Nations Human Rights Council during its 48th session in October 2021 and subsequently by the United Nations General Assembly on July 28, 2022.
• The right is interconnected with other health-focused human rights, such as the right to water and sanitation, right to food and the right to health.
• The right creates an obligation of the state to regulate and enforce environmental laws, control pollution, and otherwise provide justice and protection for communities harmed by environmental problems.
• The right to a healthy environment has been an important right for creating environmental legal precedents for climate change mitigation and other environmental issues.

Inspiration

• The right to a healthy environment has developed gradually since the 1970s when it was first alluded to by the 1972 Stockholm Declaration.
• Its first Principle states: “Man has the fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being”.
• The Stockholm Declaration was a catalyst for the recognition of the right to a healthy environment at the national and regional levels.
• At the national level, Portugal was the first country to enshrine this right in its constitution, in 1976.
• Since then, the right to a healthy environment has rapidly spread to other constitutions, in a fashion unseen for any other “new” human right.
• And now, Canberra could become the first place in Australia to give people a legal right to a healthy environment.