Access to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment (the right to a healthy environment) was recognised 50 years ago in the Stockholm Declaration.
Since then the right to a healthy environment has been been integrated into over 150 legal frameworks around the world; Australia remains one of only 37 of 193 UN Member States without the right to a healthy environment in their federal laws or constitution.
Whilst our parliaments enact legislation to protect environmental interests, shaping environmental protection through the lens of human rights is becoming more accepted, rather than just asserting rights possessed by nature in its own right.
The ACT Government has recently tabled a bill to make the ACT the first Australian jurisdiction to recognise the human right to a healthy environment in the Human Rights Act 2004 (ACT).
Given the absence of an ability to entrench constitutional environmental rights at the Commonwealth level it is a step forward. However, some experts believe that the current version of the Bill is not comprehensive enough as it lacks penalties and does not apply to private entities.
As the climate and environmental issues worsen, it is important to understand the connection between harm to the environment and human harm. Law and policy makers will need to strengthen existing laws to broader environmental rights protection as presently they are ill-suited to the times.
The Green Outlaw 