Background
Without a healthy environment, humanity cannot survive or thrive.
After a lengthy delay, the Scottish Government has published its consultation on a new Scottish Human Rights Bill.
The Bill will protect a range of rights, including the human right to a healthy environment ‘with substantive and procedural elements’. ERCS is a member of the Advisory Board to the Human Rights Bill and you can read our presentation to the Board in May 2022 on the human right to a healthy environment: What it is and why it matters.
What is the right to a healthy environment?
The right will enshrine and protect our right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. The substantive and procedural elements of the right to a healthy environment are equally important.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment has defined the substantive part as including the features of clean air, a safe climate, access to safe water and adequate sanitation, healthy and sustainably produced food, non-toxic environments in which to live, work, study and play, and healthy biodiversity and ecosystems.
Read our report on the Substantive Right to a Healthy Environment which sets out the definitions, standards and enforcement mechanism to make this right a reality.
The procedural part specifies the processes and mechanisms for people to exercise their environmental rights and ensure environmental laws are enforced. These rights include access to information, public participation in decision-making, access to justice and effective remedies and are enshrined by the UNECE Aarhus Convention.
Take action
The task now is to ensure that both the substantive and procedural parts of the right to a healthy environment are delivered with ‘teeth’. That is, our right needs to be enforceable to make a real difference to the environment and to the lives of people most affected by environmental problems in Scotland. Help us make this a reality!
Complete the Human Rights Bill consultation with help from our template response on Part 5: Recognising the right to a healthy environment, or our full consultation response.
Human Rights Consortium Scotland has released a full consultation guide if you need support completing other sections.
Our right to a healthy environment and other rights
Read our three briefings commissioned by the Human Rights Consortium Scotland on the relationship between our right to a healthy environment and three other human rights:
- How the human right to a healthy environment advances the rights of disabled people – joint briefing with Inclusion Scotland
- How the human right to a healthy environment advances our right to health
- The relationship between the human right to a healthy environment and the right to food