UN General Assembly recognizes Human Right to a Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment!

The UN General Assembly has today recognised the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. This historic breakthrough represents the culmination of decades of advocacy by millions of activists around the world, calling on governments to recognise that human rights and environmental protection are two sides of the same coin.

The resolution 76/300 recognizes that “while the human rights implications of environmental damage are felt by individuals and communities around the world, the consequences are felt most acutely by women and girls and those segments of the population that are already in vulnerable situations, including indigenous peoples, children, older persons and persons with disabilities”. 

While the resolution is not legally binding, its adoption by the UN General Assembly - as the supreme decision- and policy-making body of the UN, in which all 193 Member States of the UN are represented - sends a powerful political signal, and is likely to catalyse greater environmental protection around the world, improving the lives of communities around the world, and particularly children, whose rights are highly threatened by environmental harm.

Project Dryad and other members of the CERI coalition, working alongside incredible child and youth activists, joined a global movement dedicated to securing recognition of this right.

Now attention must turn to implementation, ensuring that children are at the heart of ambitious and urgent action to fulfil this right. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s forthcoming General Comment No. 26 on child rights and the environment, with a special focus on climate change, will have a critical role to play in this regard.