Protecting Environmental Rights and their Defenders

Miracles are provided by Nature to all of us but we haughtily take them for granted, as if our home planet owes us these services. How can we possibly exist without the air, water, land, trees, the living resources and inter-connected ecosystems that are given us for free and which unfortunately humans have put a price tag on?

Industrialization has centered on fossil-fuel based economy and accelerated destruction of essential ecosystems especially in countries where there is no strong adherence to the Rule of Law. It has made radical changes in our lifestyle, which in the long term, might not prove to be the best. We are now faced with a climate system running on an excess carbon concentration in the atmosphere, which threatens humanity’s survival itself.

Abundance does breed greed, over-exploitation and the consequent inequitable access to resources, especially to those whose existence is solely dependent on a healthy and functioning natural life support systems. Our fisherfolk are in the lowest rung of the poverty ladder, followed by the farmers, children, women, youth, migrant workers, and the senior citizens. (Source: National Statistics Coordination Board: Poverty Incidence Statistics, 2012).

“Poor people in developing countries are particularly dependent on natural resources and ecosystem services for their livelihoods. Increasingly the poor live in areas of high ecological vulnerability and relatively low levels of resource productivity. Much of the extensive debate over poverty in the last decade has in fact turned around the question of how poverty, vulnerability, livelihoods and access to resources are linked.” (https://www.fao.org/docrep/006/ad683e/ ad683e02.htm)

The dire situation in the country is a telling manifestation of our continuing failure to respond in ensuring that State-guaranteed rights to a healthful and balanced ecology is protected, at all cost.

On December 10, as we observe Human Rights’ Day, let us also focus on acting urgently to protect many who are suffering from the adverse impacts of policies and projects that have deprived them of their livelihoods as well as the plight of their defenders, who are shabbily treated by those impacted by their activism.

In June, this year’s celebration of the World Environment Day, three United Nations human rights experts called on all Governments to protect environmental rights defenders. They are the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, John Knox; the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Michel Forst, and the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous people, Victoria Tauli Corpuz, who emphasized that protecting environmental rights defenders is crucial to protect the environment and the human rights that depend on it.

Part of their joint statement reads, as follows:

“…On this World Environment Day, we want to underscore that environmental human rights defenders should be lauded as heroes for putting themselves at risk to protect the rights and well-being of others. Instead, they are often targeted as if they were enemies of the State.

The brave women and men who work to protect the environment are routinely harassed, threatened, unlawfully detained, and even murdered, merely for opposing powerful business and governmental interests bent on exploiting and destroying the natural environment on which we all depend.

The enjoyment of a vast range of human rights, including rights to life, health, food, water, and housing, depend on a healthy and sustainable environment. Those who work to protect the environment are not only environmentalists – they are also human rights defenders.

In March 2016, the Human Rights Council adopted a landmark Resolution (res 31/ 32) which requires States to ensure the rights and safety of human rights defenders working towards the realization of economic, social and cultural rights.

That was a good initial step, but Governments must do far more. They have obligations under human rights law to protect environmentalists’ rights of expression and association by responding rapidly and effectively to threats, promptly investigating acts of harassment and violence from all parties including business and non-State actors, protecting the lives of those at risk, and bringing those responsible to justice.

States must also adopt and implement mechanisms that allow defenders to communicate their grievances, claim responsibilities, and obtain effective redress for violations, without fear of intimidation.

They must take additional steps to safeguard the rights of members of marginalized and vulnerable communities, especially indigenous peoples, whose cultures, identities and livelihoods often depend on the environment and whose lives are particularly susceptible to environmental harm, placing them on the frontlines of conflict.

Currently, States are failing to meet these obligations. Of the nearly 1000 reported murders over the last decade, fewer than 10 have resulted in convictions. The real culprits are rarely held accountable for their crimes.

In the last year, the international community has reached consensus on the new sustainable development goals as a roadmap to a more sustainable, prosperous and equitable future. But those goals cannot be met if those on the front line of protecting sustainable development are not protected.

It is ironic that environmental rights defenders are often branded as ‘anti-development’, when by working to make development truly sustainable, they are actually more pro-development than the corporations and governments that oppose them.

Supporting environmental human rights defenders is crucial to protect our environment and the human rights that depend on it, and Governments should never forget that.” https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=20052&LangID=E