ENVIRONMENTAL Rights and Wrongs UN Photo
MICHAEL H. DEPLEDGE CINNAMON P. CARLARNE UNIVERSITY OF OX FORD (U.K.)
O
nce a fringe issue largely confined to elite scientific deliberation, global climate change now dominates academic, social, and political debate. What is unclear, however, is whether the upswing in attention to climate change has spawned the type of multidisciplinary debate necessary to create effective long-term solutions. Nowhere is this disjunction more apparent than at the intersection between climate change and human health. Despite progress
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on the part of the international community in negotiating legal instruments to address climate change, these instruments do not directly address links between climate change and human health. Consequently, few people have a thorough grasp of the likely adverse impacts of climate change on human health. In this article, we examine the links between environmental change—focusing primarily but not exclusively on climate change—and the concept of a human right to health. © 2008 American Chemical Society
Climate change has amplified the debate over the relationship between human health and the environment and the need to recognize a basic human right to live in a healthy environment.
Healthy living Governments worldwide express concern over the health and well-being of their citizens. The right to health was enshrined long ago in international human rights law. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN in 1948, declares that “everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of oneself and one’s family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care” (1). And the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, adopted by the UN in 1966, recognizes “the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health” (2). The constitution of the World Health Organization (WHO) confirms that “the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being” (3). Upholding the human right to health is inextricably linked to the quality of the natural environment. It is unreasonable to expect people to remain healthy or, indeed, to flourish if the ecosystems in which they live are degraded and unsustainable. This is tacitly acknowledged in the great efforts that we make to ensure that the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food that we eat contain minimal amounts of chemical contaminants and are free from infectious agents. In the U.K., the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; the Environment Agency; the Food Standards Agency; Natural England; the Health and Safety Executive; and the Health Protection Agency are all devoted to providing a safe and sustainable environment. Despite their efforts and those of other agencies in Europe and elsewhere, poor environmental conditions continue to damage health at local, regional, and international scales. In the U.K. alone, 24,000 people die prematurely every year because of air pollution, and concerns over pandemic bird flu wax and wane with the migratory rhythms of birds (4). A myriad of anthropogenic pollutants, including toxins from landfill sites, radioisotopes, hormone-disrupting chemicals in sewage, and pesticide spray drift, are testament to the real and perceived threats in the environment.
Surely this demonstrates beyond doubt the utter folly of having a basic human right to health in the absence of a basic human right to live in a healthy environment? In the midst of these troublesome considerations, scientists have identified the greatest threat to humans in modern times—global climate change. Climate change will expose humans to increasingly severe storms, flooding, heat waves, rising concentrations of ground-level ozone, infectious diseases, and shortages of food as crop production and aquaculture are adversely impacted (5). In a dramatic way, climate change highlights fundamental links between the natural environment and human health (6). It also uncomfortably exposes the fact that we are only just beginning to comprehend the innumerable ways in which environmental change can affect our well-being. Given the high-profile discussions among the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), those countries who are attempting to mitigate climate change, and those countries who continue to avoid their responsibilities regarding greenhouse gas emissions, the debate over the right to a healthy environment is especially timely (7).
Getting the rule of law right What meaning does the universal declaration of a human right to health have if it does not recognize the intimate link between ecosystem quality and our health and well-being? Without the right to a healthy environment, how can we deliver on the promise of a healthy life? This disjunction between the right to health and the absence of a right to a healthy environment reveals the inadequacies of the current system of rights and the importance of bringing together scientists, physicians, engineers, lawyers, and politicians to begin to craft more integrated solutions (8). As early as 1972, the international community considered the links between human rights and environmental quality. At the UN Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm in 1972, the parties to the conference produced the Stockholm Declaration. The Stockholm Declaration included February 15, 2008 / Environmental Science & Technology ■ 991
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one of the earliest references to the links between human rights and the environment, stating that “man has the fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being (9).” By the time of the follow-up UN Conference on Environment and Development 20 years later, however, the debate over human rights and environmental protection had not advanced. In fact, the “initial emphasis on a human rights perspective [was not] maintained” in the 1992 Rio Declaration (10). The Rio Declaration “avoided the terminology of rights altogether” (10) and, instead, declared that “human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development. They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature” (11). Thus, as of 1992, the links between human rights and environmental protection remained ambiguous. Recognizing this gap, in 1994, special rapporteur F. Z. Ksentini presented the Draft Declaration on Principles of Human Rights and the Environment to the UN (10). The declaration proposed the creation of a new category of human rights that would recognize a right to a safe and healthy environment. The UN, however, has declined to create a recognized human right to a healthy environment. It is time to revisit this issue. As climate change and pollution proceed, the lines between recognized rights to health and undeveloped rights to a healthy environment intermingle, and the human right to health progressively loses its meaning and substance. Establishing a human right to a healthy environment will not bring about immediate respect for and effective enforcement of such a right, and thereby ameliorate existing disjunctions between a human right to health and environmental quality. Unfortunately, the simple existence of a human right does not automatically translate to recognition of the right in practice. It does, however, both alter the normative framework of the debate and of992 ■ Environmental Science & Technology / February 15, 2008
fer increased opportunities for implementation and enforcement of the legal right. In other words, it creates avenues for giving “environmental quality comparable status to other economic and social rights, with some priority over non-rightsbased objectives” (10). In this way, it elevates the legal status of claims for environmental quality, creating “a claim to an absolute entitlement theoretically immune to the lobbying and trade-offs which characterize bureaucratic decision-making” (12). In addition to raising the normative status of claims for environmental quality, establishing a human right to a healthy environment also offers opportunities to embed environmental quality objectives within a well-developed and respected area of international law. Human rights jurisprudence has a “well-established set of procedural mechanisms available for implementation” (12) and offers increased opportunities for legal protection in diverse jurisdictional forums, including the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights, the European Court of Human Rights, the International Criminal Court, and the International Court of Justice. Further, recognizing a human right to a healthy environment would also reflect the inherent links between existing human rights and environmental quality—that is, “Other human rights are themselves dependent on adequate environmental quality, and cannot be realized without governmental action to protect the environment” (10). This is not to say that recognizing a human right to a healthy environment offers a panacea to address disjunctions between existing human rights and environmental quality, or to problems with enforcing recognized human rights and environmental objectives. Establishing a human right to a healthy environment will be replete with procedural and substantive difficulties (13). Despite these complications, recognizing a human right to a healthy environment offers theoretical and practical benefits. It
raises the status of claims for environmental quality in the hierarchy of international law; it opens up existing procedural mechanisms and substantive avenues for implementation and enforcement; and it responds to logical links between existing human rights and environmental well-being. Further, debating the value of a human right to a healthy environment helps raise public awareness of the links between ecosystem health and human rights, and it helps refocus scientific, legal, and civil-society efforts on improving the understanding and recognition of links between human health and environmental quality. Enshrining the links between environmental change and human health in international law is a monumental challenge. It must be done in a meaningful way that will enable the global community to respond to climate change, pollution, and loss of biodiversity at multiple levels. At the domestic level, many environmental laws recognize and institutionalize the links between human health and ecological stability and between environmental protection and human rights (14–16). However, in international law, the disjunction between the protection of human health and efforts to address environmental change creates a fragmented and, at times, dysfunctional system of law. Improving understanding and institutional recognition of the linkages between human health and environmental quality will facilitate more comprehensive, integrated decision making at the international level.
Health impacts of environmental change Existing legal incongruities belie the very real connections between environmental change and human health. WHO estimates that global warming and altered precipitation patterns associated with greenhouse gas emissions claim >150,000 lives annually (5). Most of these deaths are directly linked to interactive effects with other anthropogenic pollutants—for example, particulate matter air pollution and the heat wave that led to 30,000 premature deaths in Europe during the summer of 2003. Climate change will also lead to changing disease patterns. Many prevalent human diseases are linked to climate shifts. For example, the spread of malaria and cholera, and the increase in the numbers of heart attacks associated with heat waves can all be linked to our changing climate (17). Direct effects, however, pale in relation to the indirect threats climate change represents to social infrastructure. It is remarkable that so little attention has been paid to this topic in the scientific or political arenas. Consideration of future water shortages and malnutrition resulting from climate-derived impacts on the production of crops and seafood has been quite detailed. But what about the enormous number of diseases whose incidence and distribution will change? Illness in later life often reflects living conditions during childhood. How will this relationship evolve as increasing numbers of people migrate to avoid extreme environmental changes? Environmental refugees already number >20 million, and this figure is predicted to double by 2010 (18, 19). Most exist-
ing environmental refugees have fled outlying rural areas and moved en masse to the world’s growing megacities, increasing pressures on already-finite resources and creating conditions that lead to more disease, stress, and conflict. Climate change will compound conventional environmental pressures, leading to further increases in the number of environmental refugees and unexpected demands on local and regional health-care provisions. Ensuing social and psychological disruption will increase environment-related migration and negatively impact those people whose intimate interactions with the natural environment and sources of livelihood are disrupted. Since 1997, for example, ~25,000 farmers in India have committed suicide as a result of crop failure and ensuing economic ruin (20). This is only one example of the intimate, yet often overlooked, links between environmental change and human health. Currently, insufficient expertise is available to predict or address such episodes on a global scale.
Health and well-being from nature In contrast to threats related to poor environmental conditions, the positive benefits of spending time in natural ecosystems are gaining recognition. E. O. Wilson’s concept of “biophilia” captures the essence of the intimate relationship between humans and the natural world (21). Having evolved in biodiverse ecosystems, the theory goes, humans deprived of contact with wildlife in natural settings are adversely affected. More pragmatically, a growing body of evidence suggests that depression and psychiatric disorders—and even obesity—can be relieved by spending time in nature. The cost savings to medical services from reduced patient admissions could be enormous. Implicit in the right to health, therefore, is the right to access healthy natural ecosystems. It is time to revive attempts to legally recognize the relationship between human well-being and the natural environment. This call is not made lightly. As previously discussed, tangible problems are associated with linking human rights to environmental protection, primarily centered on the theoretical and practical issues of tying environmental protection too closely to anthropocentric goals (10, 12). Nevertheless, the human and ecological stakes are too high for this debate to be abandoned. Humans have a legally enshrined human right to health; they also have a right to be protected from climate change, chemical and radiation pollution, loss of biodiversity, and irresponsible agricultural practices. To uphold these rights, there must be a right to a healthy environment that humans can assert and enforce. This right may emerge from the extension and interpretation of the existing right to health or through the revival of the debate over a human right to a safe and healthy environment. Ultimately, we may need something more. The individualistic language of human rights may prove inadequate for encapsulating the problems posed by climate change. In the long term, climate change may lend itself better to concepts of collective rights, February 15, 2008 / Environmental Science & Technology ■ 993
drawing upon the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s notion of climate change as a common concern of all and the underlying goal of protecting the global commons for present and future generations (22). Whether the specter of climate change ultimately results in a reinterpretation of existing rights or in the creation of a new category of rights, it has put health and environmental rights on the agenda in an unprecedented fashion. But connections between human health and the natural environment extend beyond the threats climate change poses to human health and well-being. Climate change has simply amplified the urgency of the issue. Now is the proper time to refocus the debate on the relationship between human health and the environment with a view toward reconceptualizing rights and responsibilities at the international level.
Future perspectives Environmental rights may not appear to be of immediate relevance to the scientific community, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Although the legal relationship between the environment and human health may ostensibly be a political issue, it raises broader questions about the responsibilities of scientists in identifying the connections between environmental change and human health, in determining how these links should be communicated, and in helping policy makers formulate informed, integrated policies. Framing this debate properly requires effective multidisciplinary research and dialogue. Human health stands at a crossroads. Future legal and political initiatives must be taken to tackle global warming, reduce pollution, and foster human health and well-being. This requires: first, good science and second, good communication of the relationship between environmental change (including climate change) and human health so that policy makers can shape integrated policies. We ignore the links between human health and the environment at our peril. We have an established human right to health. Now, we must strive to make this right meaningful by improving our understanding of the scientific, political, and legal linkages between human health and environmental quality. Michael H. Depledge is the chair of environment and human health at Peninsula Medical Schools, Universities of Exeter and Plymouth (U.K.). He was the Keeley Visiting Fellow at Wadham College, University of Oxford (U.K.), at the time this article was written. Cinnamon P. Carlarne is the Woods Research Fellow in environmental law at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies and Wadham College, University of Oxford. Address correspondence about this article to cinnamon.carlarne@ law.ox.ac.uk.
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