Environment and Human Rights

The critical question of environmental protection regarded as a human rights issue lies within evident practical linkages between the respective causes of human rights and environmental protection since environmental harms and human rights abuses often go together. The flagrant cases where environmental campaigners themselves become victims of human rights violations and serious damage to the physical environment is frequently accompanied by repression of activists and denial of access to information are symptomatic of the more general point that under certain political and socioeconomic circumstances which in some parts of the world are quite prevalent - both the environment and human rights come under threat together. Moreover, threats to the environment can themselves directly constitute threats to lives and livelihoods, health, and well being. A corollary is that those concerned with the protection and promotion of environmental quality may often have reason to make common cause with defenders and promoters of human rights. Thus, in practice, environmentalists and human rights workers have often joined, for instance, in local struggles over land and water rights, toxic dumping, and disruptive construction projects. The reasons environmental campaigners have to favour a human rights approach to environmental protection (Aiken 1992; Nickel 1983) are that it allows them ‘to appeal to traditional human rights norms and to use the institutions and mechanisms developed to promote and implement human rights at the international level. The human rights movement has strong international recognition, support, and institutions and thus has valuable resources to offer environmentalism’(Nickel 1983:283). Human rights proponents, for their part, may see environmental protection as a means to the end of fulfilling human rights standards. ‘Since degraded environments contribute directly to infringements of the human rights to life, health, and livelihood, acts leading to environmental degradation may constitute an immediate violation of interracially recognized human rights’ (Anderson 1996a:3). Certainly, claims of a right to an adequate environment have been mobilized politically in a way that suggests it is a distinct human rights issue in a way that a right to sleep is not. Yet, environmental protection can be considered a human rights issue without that necessarily implying that there is a human right to an adequate environment.



The Right to Meaningful Participation


International human rights groups traditionally regard the international Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ICCPR as a core instrument of the human rights movement. The ICCPR contains guarantees to the right to life, the right not to be subjected to medical or scientific experimentation, the right not to be subjected to inhumane or degrading treatment, the right to liberty and security of person, the right not to be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy or the family, and the right to marry and found a family. The ICCPR endorses the general principle that there should be no sexual discrimination when implementing its guarantees. Many of the activities associated with population policies, however violate these civil and political rights and discriminate on the basis of sex.


Although attempts to invoke civil and political rights directly in the pursuit of environmental claims have been few, they have met with mixed success. Social and economic rights may be thought to have a more immediate connection with environmental protection because such rights are related directly to human well being and capacity building, rather than simply the character of the political order. Many principals on human rights and the environment reformulate existing rights such a s life and health so as to develop their environmental dimensions. However since environmental protection is not the intended aim of the rights in question the inference typically depends on a degree of judicial activism that would not be acceptable as a generalizable principle in constitutional democratic states since it cuts against the principle of the separation of powers.

Public participation has long been recognized in domestic legal systems as critical to implementing the rights of individuals and communities to be informed about and be meaningful participants in decisions that affect the quality of their lives and environment. These decisions include those that affect the quality of the air they breath, the quality of water they drink, and the quality of other natural resources on which they depend. The need for public participation is often justified on the grounds that it results in better decisions. Increasingly, however, public participation is recognized as a right of individuals and communities to participate in decisions that affect their lives, including the right to know and the right to review.

The special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment of the Sub- commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities of the commission on Human Rights address the issue of public participation in her report and in the draft declaration on Human Rights and the Environment. The special rapporteur found both the right to information and the right to meaningful participation, including equal access to judicial and administrative actions, to be highly relevant to the issue of human rights and environment. She found broad support for these rights within the united nations system, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the World Charter for Nature. The draft includes a section on participation rights, including the rights to information, meaningful participation, and effective remedy and redress. Public participation at a domestic level is relatively well established. The importance of public participation in environmental decision making has achieved international recognition. The 1992 united nations conference on Environment and Development UNCED recognized the many benefits of public participation to government, regulated communities, individuals, groups and society as a whole, and stressed public participation as one of the fundamental means for moving governments toward sustainable development. The Rio Declaration and Agenda 21 endorsed the principle of public participation at the national and international levels.




The Right to water


The Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights has been established with detailed provisions from which the right to water can be inferred. Article 11 (1) establishes that the States recognize the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and for his family, including adequate food. Article 11 (2) refers to State obligations related to the right of everyone to be free from hunger, saying that States shall take measures to improve methods of production of food by developing or reforming agrarian systems in such a way as to achieve the most efficient development and utilization of natural resources. The right to water could also be inferred from this part of the article. Evidently, the most efficient development and utilization of natural resources in order to improve methods of food production shall take into special account aspects related to quality, distribution, and utilization of water. Article 12 of the Covenant, which is related to t he right to health, includes as part of the necessary steps States must take to achieve the full realization of this right those necessary for the reduction of infant mortality and those necessary for the improvement of all aspects of environmental and industrial hygiene. Article 25 of the universal declaration on human rights proclaims that “ every one has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well being of himself and of his family, including food….” unless food were imported from other states, the right to an adequate standard of living presumes an adequate supply of water to sustain agriculture to the extent necessary to feed a state’s population.

Humanitarian law: Under humanitarian law (the laws governing war) the right to water is recognized and protected. It is a well established rule of the law of armed conflict that the enemy’s water supply may not be poisoned or contaminated. In this respect, Article 54, paragraph 2, of the 1977 protocol 1 addition to the Geneva conventions, related to the protection of civilians in conflicts of an international nature, states, “it is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as food stuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away or for any other motive.

In the period from 1900-1995, global water withdrawals to satisfy demand grew by a factor of six, more than double the rate of population growth (UN, 2002). Water scarcity in the early part of the twenty first century could therefore create conditions similar to those experienced in the 1970s as result of the oil shocks. This rapid growth in water demand is due to the increasing reliance on irrigation to achieve food security, the growth of industrial uses, and the increasing use per capita for domestic purposes. It is estimated that about 460 million people live in countries using so much of their water resources that they can be considered to be highly water stressed. A number of well known major water pollution problems were discussed in the 1997 WMO report. Inadequately treated contaminated water is one of the major causes of human illness. Micro organisms found in waters such as bacteria, viruses are the cause of many waterborne diseases. These are present in virtually all wastes discharged, even those from most sewage treatment plants. It is essential to treat drinking water properly to prevent illness. In the past two decades, essential water supply services have been provided to millions of people worldwide, saving a great many lives and reducing illness. However the rate of supply has not kept pace with that of population growth, and 20 percent of the world’s population lack access to safe water supply, while 50 percent lack access to adequate sanitation

The quality of the water used for basic needs as sanitation, cleansing, and growing food is equally important. An example of such water quality is a situation in Chile, in which much of the agricultural land is irrigated with water from the same rivers into which most domestic and industrial waste is dumped. This practice resulted in an outbreak of cholera in 1991, largely because Santiago, had no water treatment plants. From the point of view of the individuals, the human right to drinking water comprises both the right to an adequate supply of water and the right to quality water. The State obligations correlative to this right would differ depending on whether the right to water is understood as part of the right to life or as part of the right to health, of the right to food or as a proper right in itself.

Measurement of States’ compliance with their obligation to provide safe water can be achieved in various ways. One is by measuring the general population’s access to water. UNDP shows measures in its annual HD Report, measure access to water. In the report, the programme offers data in the profile of human development and in the profile of human deprivation related to the percentage of population with access to safe water and to the percentage of population with access to safe water and to the percentage of population without access. In this sense, the 1996 Human Right Development Report shows that in countries with high human development indicators, an average of 84 percent of the population has access to safe water (showing 100 percent for Singapore and 71 percent for Argentina). While in countries with low human development indicators the average falls to 55 percent (97 percent for Bangladesh and 12 percent for Afghanistan).

Another manner of measuring a State’s compliance with its obligation of providing safe water is through the personal consequences of the lack of access to it. For example, if a child dies because of illness resulting from not having access to safe water such as diarrhoea, it could be very well argued that the State has violated his right to life. Although there are several ways of measuring and ensuring states; compliance with their obligations related to the rights to water, one of the first steps should be to raise awareness about the existence of the right to water and about the importance of this right. One very important aspect of this is to take into account that water is a resource that remains constant and finite.



The Right to Land

The rights of national governments to exercise jurisdiction over all lands and natural resources located within the boundaries of the states in which they operate are widely acknowledged. This is what accords government the authority to promulgate regulations applying to the activities of both owners of private property and users of common property. But beyond this, governments can and often do assert far reaching claims to the ownership of land and associated natural resources in the form of public property by virtue of conquest (e.g. Russian ownership in Serbia), the exercise of royal prerogative purchase (the acquisition of Alaska by the US), inheritance (Canada’s inheritance of crown lands under he British North American Act 1867), succession or some combination of these claims. Despite t he publicity surrounding privatization, the government Russian Federation claims most of the land base of Russia as public property the government of Canada treats the bulk of the country’s land base as public property evening US, widely regarded as bastion of private property and free enterprise, the federal government alone claims about one third of the nation’s land as public property (Brubaker, 1984). Yet this is not the whole story regarding systems of land tenure. Although effective control has flowed steadily toward national governments during most of the modern era, many small indigenous or traditional groups residing within states and engaging in distinctive social practices have not relinquished their claims to ownership of large tracts of land and natural resources in the form of common property (Berkes, 1989; Bromley, 1992). Often these claims overlap or conflict with assertions on the part of national governments to the effect that the areas in question are part of the public domain. Indigenous land claims In British Columbia, for example, cover virtually all the land area of the province.

However the concept of property encompasses a bundle of rights, and the contents of this bundle can be allocated in any of a variety of ways. This has given rise to lively debates about t he nature and extent of usufructuary rights in situations where user groups have not been granted full title to land and natural resources. Among the most significant aspects of this debate are issues concerning the rights of national governments to authorize consumptive uses of forests, hydrocarbons, and non fuel minerals in areas that are important to the conduct of longstanding subsistence or artisanal activities featuring the use of living resources on the part of local peoples.

Environmental issues, in any case, are best handled with the participation of all concerned citizen, at the relevant level. At the national level, each individual shall have appropriate access to information concerning the environment that is held by public authorities … and the opportunity to participate in decision making processes. States shall facilitate and encourage public awareness and participation by making information widely available. Effective access to judicial and administrative proceedings, including redress and remedy shall be provided.

Reference;

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