Human right to a healthy environment. Steps forward after the pandemic?

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Published by Sabrina Bergamini on 11 May 2021

The right to a healthy and sustainable environment: the declaration of the UN agencies

The 46th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, which ran from February to March 2021, recently passed a resolution calling on states to conserve, protect and restore ecosystems, crucial to human health and well-being.

During the appointment 15 UN agencies have issued a joint declaration expressing their support for the global recognition of the right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment.

The statement joint states that "global recognition of the right to a healthy environment will support efforts to leave no one behind, ensure a just transition to an environmentally sound and socially just world, and realize human rights for all".

"The right to a healthy environment is recognized by over 150 UN member states but has not been formally recognized globally, thus delaying the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, exacerbating inequalities and creating gaps in protection, particularly for environmental human rights defenders, children, young people, women and indigenous peoples who have often been and continue to be agents of change for the protection of the environment. We are facing a triple environmental crisis: climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. The rights of present and future generations depend on a healthy environment".

Pollution and climate change vs the right to the environment

If present and future of humanity depend on the state of the environmentHowever, this awareness contrasts with the consequences that pollution, climate change, biodiversity loss have on the health of the planet and people. According to the World Health Organization, 23% of all deaths are linked to "environmental risks" such as air pollution, water contamination, exposure to dangerous and toxic chemicals.

The list, albeit synthetic, the reasons for recognizing the right to a healthy environment as a human right are put down by Unep - the United Nations program for the environment (2).

Having a compromised planet from an environmental point of view it compromises the health of its inhabitants and the right to health. Environment and health go hand in hand, as perhaps the Covid-19 pandemic should also teach us.

The destruction of the wild spaces, the deforestation, the alteration of natural lands facilitates the onset and spread of zoonotic diseases and contact with wildlife increases the possibility that pathogens pass from animals to humans. It is estimated, says UNEP, that about 60% of human infections are of animal origin. And there are many viruses ready to make the leap of species. In short, the Covid-19 pandemic could only be a dramatic advance of new deadly epidemics and diseases of which we still know nothing.

The lethal consequences of pollution

Pollution in all its forms it claims victims. Atmospheric one reduces life expectancy. Nine out of ten people around the world breathe polluted air. "Approximately 7 million people die from air pollution-related diseases and infections each year, more than five times the number of people who die in road accidents.".

Billions of people all over the world they are threatened by pollution and the persistence of waste in ecosystems. Dirty water makes you sick.

"Water contaminated by waste, untreated sewage, agricultural runoff and industrial waste puts 1,8 billion people at risk of contracting cholera, dysentery, typhus and polio".

Million of people suffer from acute pesticide poisoning. The impact of microplastics that accumulate in the seas and the food chain is an ongoing front of worrying discoveries. Medicines negatively impact when they contaminate ecosystems. Abuse creates resistance to antibiotics. And the fact that antibiotics have become less effective means that already today there are around 700 people dying from resistant infections every year. It is no coincidence that antibiotic resistance is one of the great global health problems that the planet is already facing, perhaps overshadowed in the last year by the coronavirus pandemic.

When biodiversity is lost

The loss of biodiversity results in similar food diets around the world and compromises the nutritional value of food. In just 50 years, UNEP recalls, human diets have become more similar to each other and only 12 crops and five animal species provide 75% of the world's energy intake.

"Today, nearly one in three people suffer from some form of malnutrition and much of the world's population suffers from food-related diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer.".

The effects of climate change

Climate change it is there for all to see and brings immediate consequences and for future generations. Fires, floods, hurricanes, droughts and extreme weather events already threaten people's lives, livelihoods, land holdings, food security. And as UNEP points out, climate change facilitates the spread of viruses.

According to an article published by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, 'Pandemics are likely to occur more frequently, spread faster, have a greater economic impact and kill more people.''.

Behind the corner there is the launch of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030, which aims to stop the degradation of ecosystems and restore them, with a deadline of 2030 of the Sustainable Development Goals which represents for many the deadline against climate catastrophe. The Decade will be officially launched on 5 June, World Environment Day (3).

Sabrina Bergamini