The latest UN Special Rapporteur’s report highlights the urgent need for businesses, States, and other stakeholders to transform humanity's relationship with nature by prioritising the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment.
Here’s how businesses can lead the way:
🔍 Deepen your understanding of the right to a healthy environment by exploring its nine procedural and substantive elements.
⚖️ Tackle key challenges, such as protecting environmental defenders and addressing harmful practices, particularly in sectors like agriculture and extraction.
🚫 Avoid “false solutions” like greenwashing or maladaptation—commit to genuine, equitable, and rights-based sustainability practices.
For further information:
The Special Rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment published A/79/270 Overview of the implementation of the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment (August 2024), which looks at how this human right has been implemented globally, including identifying key progress, challenges and opportunities.
Key points from the report:
- Nine components of this right: The report explains that the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment contains both procedural and substantive elements.
The procedural elements are access to information, participation, and access to justice:
- Access to information is an internationally-recognised human right, obligating States to provide affordable, timely, accurate, and accessible information, including on climate change and environmental crises.
- Public participation ensures the right to effective and meaningful involvement in Government and public affairs, including on environmental issues. States must facilitate inclusive, equitable, and informed participation, protect against discrimination, and ensure civic spaces are safe for environmental defenders, as well as Indigenous Peoples, youth, women, journalists, and scientists.
- Access to justice guarantees simple, affordable, accessible and timely processes and remedies, , holding States and businesses accountable for violations of environmental, human rights, and climate laws.
The substantive elements are clean air, safe climate, safe and sufficient water, healthy and sustainable food, non-toxic environments, and healthy ecosystems and biodiversity.
- Clean air is essential for all, yet 8.1 million lives were lost to air pollution in 2021. 89% of all deaths caused by it happen in low-and middle-income countries. Efforts to reduce air pollution, including cutting fossil fuel use and advancing cleaner energy, should be prioritised with a human rights-based approach.
- Climate change threatens human rights, lives and increases poverty through, for example, severe water shortages, water pollution and declining potable water and agricultural produce. Despite this, States and businesses’ commitments, policies and net zero targets are well below what is needed and some climate actions, including maladaptation, greenwashing and geoengineering, are worsening the situation.
- Safe and sufficient water is crucial, but half the world’s population lacks access to clean water and sanitation. Vulnerable groups, especially women and Indigenous Peoples, face greater risks, with extractive industries further limiting access to safe water.
- Healthy and sustainable food systems must protect both the environment and human health. Women and girls make up 60% of those suffering extreme hunger, and the lack of formal land and tenure rights jeopardise the right to food for millions of Indigenous Peoples, who are also affected by high contamination from mining on their lands.
- Non-toxic environments is included in the right to a healthy environment. Despite its importance, one in six premature deaths is caused by pollution and toxic substances and 92% of all pollution-related deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. In addition, 750,000 workers die annually from occupational exposure to toxic substances.
- Healthy ecosystems and biodiversity are essential for human food, medicine, cultural practices and shelter. Despite their importance, one million of the world’s species of plants and animals are threatened with extinction. Biodiversity loss especially impacts Indigenous Peoples, Afrodescendent, and rural communities who rely on these ecosystems, highlighting the need to respect their land rights.
- Main challenges of implementing this right: The report provides an overview of the main challenges with implementing the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. These include the current economic model of unsustainable development, the worsening consequences of the triple planetary crises, the weak rule of law which means that current environmental frameworks are not enforced, and limitations to access to information, participation and justice. War, conflict and illegal activities, driven partly by uncontrolled extractive activities like mining, deforestation and large-scale agricultural activities, are also challenges to implementing this right, as are the increased attacks on environmental human rights defenders and the closing of civic spaces. The report also goes on to spotlighting people and groups who are especially vulnerable to climate and environmental impacts, not least due to systemic inequalities, discrimination and historic exclusion from decision-making processes. The groups spotlighted are persons with disabilities, persons in situations of poverty, the LGBTQ+ community, internally displaced people, migrants, women and girls, youth and children, and Indigenous Peoples.
- What can businesses do? The report recommends that States, international organisations and businesses: 1) Improve the monitoring of the status of implementation of the right to a healthy environment, including during the universal periodic review process; 2) Implement transformational changes, on the basis of the interconnection of natural and human systems and planetary boundaries, avoiding consideration of linear systems; 3) Avoid false solutions, including greenwashing, maladaptation and environmental and conservation measures that violate human rights; 4) Expand effective monitoring and control to businesses, eliminating subsidies and other incentives inconsistent with the right to a healthy environment, while advancing transformative systemic actions; and 5) Implement the precautionary principle and other international law obligations to effectively protect the environment and avoid degradation, while introducing and complying with strong regulations.
