AAAS Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program

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Report on Science and Human Rights

Fall 2002 Vol XXII, No. 2

Talking About Human Rights in Johannesburg

Now that the long-anticipated World Summit on Sustainable Development has ended, a host of participants and observers are busy assessing its outcome and adding up the gains and losses. This task is complicated by the magnitude of the WSSD: tens of thousands of participants from around the world could choose from among hundreds of events, all across the city of Johannesburg, during a period of several weeks. Although the assessment will focus on the governmental negotiations conducted under the auspices of the United Nations, which were the centerpiece of the WSSD, that perspective inevitably misses many smaller events whose outcomes and aftermath may be more hopeful and conceivably lead to longer-lasting change than the official proceedings, whose mixed results disappointed many human rights and environmental advocates.

One such hopeful event was an all-day workshop exploring and promoting the interconnections among human rights, sustainable development and environmental protection, which took place on September 1. The goal of the workshop was primarily educational: to enable the environmental and sustainable development NGOs who made up the bulk of the civil society audience at the WSSD to make better use of human rights law, mechanisms and approaches in their work.

Articulating, developing and communicating the links between human rights and the environment is the goal of the AAAS Science and Human Rights Program's project in human rights and the environment, funded by the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund, and AAAS was one of the lead organizers of the workshop.

The workshop was very much a collective effort. It was sponsored by an ad hoc group of about 20 international human rights and environmental NGOs, most of which had not worked together before. That they were able to work together so effectively was itself one of the successful outcomes of the day and a good sign for the future. They came together out of a common desire to ensure that human rights was on the agenda in Johannesburg, and operated from the belief that there can be no sustainable development without human rights. The workshop focused less on the proceedings at the Summit itself than on preparing the way for life after Johannesburg: creating links and sharing information among human rights and environmental organizations, that will enable them to work together to accomplish their common but differentiated agendas.

The evolving understanding of the links between human rights and the environment was clearly articulated by Mary Robinson, outgoing UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, in her keynote address at the start of the workshop. As she put it:

What workshops such as this should strive to do is to show each community how it can benefit from interaction with the other. Environmentalists must come to realize that the language and framework of human rights provides another tool in their struggle to protect the environment. At the same time, human rights advocates need to look to the significant role that environmental degradation—in all its forms—has on the enjoyment of individual rights, not alone for those living today but for future generations.

Speaking specifically about the human rights dimension of the debate, the High Commissioner cleared up some common misconceptions by stating that:

[H]uman rights are not by nature environmentally unfriendly. The right to safe drinking water is not the right to waste drinking water. The right to housing does not support the destruction of forests essential in both ecological and human health terms. The goals of protecting the earth for future generations and of ensuring the dignity of those living at the present time are inextricably intertwined.

Themes sounded in the High Commissioner's keynote address reappeared throughout the day, applied by subsequent speakers to more specific topics at the intersection between human rights and the environment. An expert panel took them up next. Panelists included Miloon Kothari and Fatma Vesely, respectively the UN Special Rapporteurs on the Right to Adequate Housing and on the Illicit Trade in Pesticides and Other Dangerous Products; Samuel Nguiffo, a recipient of the Goldman Environmental Prize, whose efforts on behalf of the tropical rainforests of Cameroon encompass the people who live in them; and Mililani Trask, an attorney, activist, and representative to the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues from the Pacific region.

The afternoon was taken up by two concurrent sets of five breakout groups, for a total of ten. Making no claim to comprehensiveness, the breakout sessions highlighted a cross-section of current and emerging issues where human rights and the environment intersect. Topics included community-based property rights, corporate accountability, environmental justice, food and agriculture, indigenous peoples and minorities, procedural rights, toxic wastes, trade and investment, water, and women.

Although the subject matter of the sessions ranged from civil and political rights, to particular vulnerable groups, to economic, social and cultural rights, and to traditional environmental topics, by the end of the day, some common themes had emerged. These included: 1) the need for both groups to learn more about and from each other; 2) the importance of access to information, participation and transparency; 3) the range of tools available—beyond simply the traditional legal tools—and the complementarity among them; and 4) the importance of putting local communities first.