Access to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is a universal human right. This principle was affirmed by the United Nations General Assembly during its most recent plenary session, where the resolution received broad backing with 161 votes in favor, eight abstentions, and no votes against. The UN described the resolution as historic and a clear example of how the international community can unite to confront the planet’s triple environmental crisis: climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss.
The text, originally proposed last June by Costa Rica, the Maldives, Morocco, Slovenia, and Switzerland, states that the right to a healthy environment is tied to existing international law and that its full realization requires robust implementation of multilateral environmental agreements.
The resolution emphasizes that human rights are affected by the state of the environment. Climate change, unsustainable resource management, air, soil, and water pollution, inadequate handling of chemicals and waste, and the resulting biodiversity decline all hinder the exercise of this right.
It also notes that environmental damage produces direct and indirect negative effects on the full enjoyment of all human rights.
The text, which builds on a similar instrument adopted by the Human Rights Council last year, calls on states, international organizations, and companies to intensify their efforts to provide a healthy environment for everyone.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomed the adoption of the resolution,calling it a historic milestone that demonstrates member states can unite in a collective response to the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.
Reducing environmental injustices
The decision is expected to reduce environmental injustices, close protection gaps, and empower people, particularly those in vulnerable situations such as environmental rights defenders, children, youth, women, and indigenous peoples.
The accompanying image shows a demonstration in Birmingham, United Kingdom, where people gathered to demand stronger action against climate change.
Guterres later noted that the resolution should help states accelerate compliance with environmental and human rights commitments. He cautioned that this is only the beginning and urged nations to turn the newly recognized right into reality for all, everywhere.
High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet likewise welcomed the decision and supported the secretary-general’s call for timely measures to implement it.
Bachelet remarked that this moment is momentous but insufficient on its own. She urged states to honor their international obligations and intensify efforts to realize the right to a healthy environment. If no concerted action is taken now, the world will bear the brunt of ongoing environmental crises.
Bachelet explained that aligning environmental action with human rights duties helps place meaningful limits on economic policies and business models that harm people and the planet.
David Boyd, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, underscored that the Assembly resolution could reshape the framework of international human rights law. He said governments have long promised to tackle climate change, but recognizing the right to a healthy environment shifts public expectations from pleading for action to demanding action from governments.
Universal recognition
The road to this declaration spanned five years. The 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm, elevated environmental issues within international discourse and began a dialogue between industrialized and developing nations about the relationship between growth, pollution, and the well-being of people around the world.
The accompanying image depicts the impact of global warming on Lake Jökulsárlón in Iceland, illustrating the tangible effects of environmental change.
Inger Andersen, head of the United Nations Environment Programme, described today’s resolution as elevating the right to its rightful place and as a potential catalyst for action that empowers ordinary citizens to hold governments to account for a healthy and clean environment.
The United Nations emphasizes that climate change is increasingly evident through rising violence, droughts, water scarcity, forest fires, sea level rise, floods, polar melting, catastrophic storms, and biodiversity decline.
According to the World Health Organization, air pollution remains the leading cause of morbidity and premature death worldwide, claiming more than seven million lives prematurely each year. The loss or decline of biodiversity threatens food security, access to clean water, and the broader fabric of life that includes countless species and ecosystems.
The abstentions came from eight countries: China, Russia, Belarus, Cambodia, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Syria, and Ethiopia.