Environmental Protection and Human Rights

Running head: HUMAN RIGHT AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
HUMAN RIGHT AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
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HUMAN RIGHT AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION1
The issues of environmental protection and human rights are closely interconnected
yet mutually responsive. This is because both of these are intended to serve the humanity.
This is because safe and healthy environment is one of the most important pre-condition of
enjoying human rights. This connection between these two essential elements, have three
chief approaches which have been recognized in different international as well as regional
instruments as well as resolutions of subsidiary organizations of the United Nations. In
addition to this, the decisions of the international conferences along with the judicial
pronouncements of the tribunals have considered the human rights strategies as effective
means for achieving the goals of the environmental protection1. Despite the fact that there is
intense linking between the environmental protection and human rights, most of the
organizations have pointed out the problems of human right violations and environmental
degradation are also interrelated.
The environmentalists have focused primarily on the natural resources conservation
without speaking the human influences of environmental misuses. The state of natural
inequity has been established by most of the human centric activities like urbanization,
industrialization and the huge exploitation of the natural resources that damage the
environmental elements. This has led to the serious repercussions affecting the nature in a
large scale such as drought, global warming, flood, migration, environmental refugees, health
issues and most importantly the ozone layer depletion. These issues not only becoming the
environmental factors but molding other essential factors like political, economic and social
factors that needs proper integration of all the three approaches so that these issues can be
handled more holistically. The chief aim of this piece is the investigation three specific
1 Neumayer, Eric. Greening trade and investment: environmental protection without
protectionism. Routledge, 2017.

HUMAN RIGHT AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION2
approaches for examining whether the human rights law command must subsume
environmental law regime or whether the latter needs to subsume the former or whether both
these legal regimes must be existent separately, with a mutual interaction.
The method of linking the issue like human rights with environment has created a
rights based tactic for the environmental protection. This keeps the people damaged by the
environmental degradation in the center. Articulating the important rights of the people in
respect to the environment has created opportunities for securing these rights through the
human rights agencies in the international forum and the national boards2. In this regard, the
influence made by the national judiciaries for the protection of the environment then provide
remedies to victims of the environmental harms by relating the rights based approach for
environmental protection can be an example for the law makers. This will help to lay a
framework where human rights can successfully contribute in the process of shielding the
environment in one hand and the survival of humanity.
As Boyle has pointed out in his book that the relationship between environmental
protection and human rights in the international law is very complicated to subscribe3. A new
approach for codifying and developing international law was initiated by UNHRC in the year
2011. Based on this, the author has explored three possibilities in his article. First of all, the
as the Rio Declaration of 1992 on the environment and overall development have focused on
the procedural rights to be most essential environmental addition to the human rights.
Therefore, any types of amendment or policy making associated with human rights procedure
need to consult and abide by this development of UNHRC. Secondly the author has pointed
2 Connors, Michael K., Rémy Davison, and Jörn Dosch. The New Global Politics of the Asia-
Pacific: Conflict and Cooperation in the Asian Century. Routledge, 2017
3 Boyle A, 'Human Rights And The Environment: Where Next?' (2012) 23 European Journal
of International Law

HUMAN RIGHT AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION3
out that a declaration and protocol can be apt mechanism for the articulation of some of the
most controversial notion of human rights to desired atmosphere. Thirdly, the issues of the
extra-territorial application of the prevailing human rights treaties to the transboundary
pollution along with global climate change have not yet been resolved. Therefore, the chief
concern and recommendation of the authors can be fully supportive where he states that the
responses of the human rights law need to be in the international terms. This needs to
mitigate the threat to global climate as well as environment which is the common concern for
humanity.
The idea of incorporating the environmental protection and human rights have a vital
impact but have many barriers to reach. More than 2 million people annually die and billions
of people fall diseases due to various types of pollution. The environment degradation, water
shortage, natural disasters, fisheries depletion, declination of ecosystem are the consequences
of excessive deforestation, disposal of toxic, dangerous products and wastes and most
importantly unsafe or unwise management of the natural resources. The people in the urban
areas are not directly affected by these actions but the aboriginal people or the communities
who completely depend upon the nature and forests, face the direct blow. They are the chief
people to get affected by the degradation of ecosystem as they rely on balanced ecosystem for
their livelihood. The issue of climate change has been exacerbating many negative impacts of
the environmental degradation directly on the human health and their wellbeing. In the least
few decades the situation has become more grave and causing new problem of extreme
weather events and in case of spread of vector borne disease. These aspects clearly disclose
the connection between the enjoyment of human rights to its fullest and environmental
effects.