AAAS Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program

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Environment and Human Rights Project

Overview

The Human Rights and Environment website, containing resource information on human rights, environmental protection and the links between them, is one component of a three-year project to develop and promote the multiple connections between human rights and environmental protection, to the benefit of both. The project is built on the premise that, despite some differences, the human rights and environmental movements share many of the same goals and concerns. Understanding of their common ground and of the knowledge, methods and resources that each group brings to its work would improve the ability of both to realize their shared goal of a world that sustainably shelters and nurtures human and non-human life.

In December 2000, the Science and Human Rights Program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science received a grant from the Richard & Rhoda Goldman Fund to explore and develop the intrinsic connections between environmental protection and the realization of many of the economic, social and cultural rights enumerated in major international human rights instruments. A central premise of the project is that it is not possible to promote human rights apart from also working to improve environmental standards. Substantive human rights such as the rights to food and health cannot be fully and meaningfully understood or realized without taking account of their environmental dimensions. Similarly, environmental protection will be more effective and sustainable if it recognizes and takes into account human rights principles, implementation strategies and monitoring methods. By fostering a broader understanding of economic, social and cultural rights to include environmental protections, the project will provide a broader and more meaningful basis for collaboration between the human rights and environmental communities.

The twin purposes of the project, then, are to promote the incorporation of environmental factors within the substantive understanding and monitoring of existing human rights, particularly the social and economic rights enumerated in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and to improve knowledge and utilization within the environmental community of the fundamentals of human rights. This strategy provides a more effective basis for collaboration between the human rights and environmental communities.

The project has several interrelated components. The first is to conduct background research on the environmental factors affecting the ability to realize selected human rights. At the international level the project focuses on the rights to health and to food, as enumerated in a variety of international human rights instruments. In this effort the Science and Human Rights Program is working in partnership with NGOs with expertise in these rights, including FIAN International (FoodFirst Information and Action Network), headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany, and the Washington, DC-based Global Children's Health and Environment Fund.

In addition, the project will work in South Africa to conceptualize key components of the most serious environmental problems related to two new human rights recognized in the 1996 South African Constitution. These are the right to environmental protection and to an environment that is not harmful to health and well-being, and the right to access to sufficient water. There is increasing awareness within the environmental and human rights communities of the importance of access to clean water. South Africa has broken new ground by making the right to the environment and the right to water legally binding, but as yet these rights are difficult to implement because there is not a clear understanding of their scope or the relevant obligations of the government.

We plan to translate the research on the environmental factors affecting the implementation of human rights described above into resources to enable the human rights and environmental communities to undertake more effective monitoring, including development of standards, benchmarks and indicators. An important vehicle for the project's educational function will be accomplished through the development of materials accessible to a wide audience.