Achieving environmental justice through human rights

Abstract

Human Rights and Environmental Issues are inevitably related because Human Rights are based on individual rights to life and security and because the unequal access to environmental resources threatens these basic principles. Two main terms have been employed regarding this approach. "Environmental Rights" refers to the human right to a clean and healthy environment (including nutritious food, clean air and water, parks, recreation, health care, education, transportation, safe jobs, etc.). Meanwhile "Environmental Justice" is a term more specifically related to inequitable access to environmental resources for groups such as racial minorities, small communities, women, or residents of developing states. Groundwork for environment justice may be traced in between the links of environment protection and human rights as both are the means to maximize human dignity and well being. Nowadays the legal protection of human rights has increasingly been invoked to achieve the ends of environment justice. Environment justice deals with equitable utilization of resources, procedural fairness and a safe and healthy environment. In the era of globalization and a shift towards non-state actors, international human rights has acquired crucial role. It can be arguably said human rights deal with the conflict between trade and the environment and provide the means to reconcile it. These concepts generally generate social and environmental movements in an effort to analyze and overcome the power structures that have traditionally threatened environmental reforms in a variety of situations. In this Article, I endeavored to address the intricacies involved in environment justice and various complexities, which can arise in the process of implementing the right to environment. In the course of my discussion I will also be analyzing as to how, human rights have played significant role to achieve the environment justice and discrepancies, which flow along with it.