1. Defending the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment: a human rights framework

This section is central to understanding the principle of a right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, and its relationship with UN advocacy.

The Special Rapporteur on the right to a healthy environment, Astrid Puente Riaños, will walk you through the basics:

_{Source: ISHR}

On 8 October 2021, the UN Human Rights Council adopted Resolution 48/13, formally recognising the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a human right. The UN General Assembly (UNGA) later solidified the global recognition of the right on 28 July 2022 when it adopted Resolution 76/300 reinforcing the Human Rights Council (HRC) resolution.

This milestone broadens the interpretation of human rights law with a clear prerogative: People cannot fully enjoy their human rights if the environment they depend on is unsafe or degraded. Therefore, everyone has the right to live in a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.

A note on terminology: We will also refer to he right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as ‘the right to a healthy environment’. In many publications, it is also abbreviated as ‘R2HE’.

What does it entail?

The right to a healthy environment includes substantive and procedural elements. Substantive elements refer to the environmental conditions people are entitled to—such as clean air, a safe water and climate, non-toxic environments, healthy and sustainable food, and healthy ecosystems. Procedural elements ensure that people can protect these conditions through access to information, meaningful participation in decision-making, and access to justice and effective remedies. These procedural elements are fundamental tools to realise the substantive elements. The substantive and procedural elements are meant to protect the individual and collective dimension of the right to a healthy environment. To effectively guarantee the right to a healthy environment, States have the obligation to protect, respect, and fulfil each one of these elements separately and in combination.

This approach heavily relies on the human rights principle of interdependence, acknowledging that we cannot fulfil our fundamental guarantees in isolation. In other words, this is not a 'new right' but a recognition, an expanded interpretation, and a consolidation of its content, including environmental dimensions already embedded in existing human rights. This recognition also clarified States' obligations to prevent foreseeable harms to environment and to provide remedies.

Source: "The right to a healthy environment: from recognition to implementation", Franciscans International

Progress stemming from the right to a healthy environment

Many regional treaties and bodies already recognise the right to a healthy environment like the San Salvador Protocol, the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration, and the Arab Charter on Human Rights. After the UNGA adopted the resolution, international courts further incorporated the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment in two landmark advisory opinions in 2025:

• The International Court of Justice (ICJ) Advisory Opinion on the obligations of States in respect of climate change.
• The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) Advisory Opinion on the Climate Emergency and Human Rights.

These rulings illustrate the expanding potential of the UNGA resolution and its ability to transform human rights standards into concrete obligations for States.

From then on, the environmental dimensions already embedded in existing human rights law were streamlined to strengthen clarity, coherence and accountability. To date, for instance, the right to a healthy environment is enshrined in more than 100 constitutions globally.

Source: Franciscans International

Defender Story

Colombia - Defending the Atrato River and the right to a healthy environment

For generations, Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities relied on the Atrato River (Chocó Region, north-west Colombia) for life, food, and culture. But illegal gold mining activities poisoned the water with mercury, causing severe health issues and destroying fish stocks. The government failed to act, leaving communities to suffer the consequences. Local leaders refused to stay silent. They filed a constitutional petition (acción de tutela), arguing that destroying the river was a direct violation of their right to life, health, and food. In 2016, Colombia’s Constitutional Court issued a historic ruling:

• The river has rights: The Atrato river was recognised as a legal subject with the right to exist, be protected, and be restored.
• Biocultural rights: The Court declared that the people’s cultural survival is inseparable from the river’s health.
• Shared guardianship: The order mandated that both the State and the local communities act as joint guardians to clean the river and stop illegal mining.

This case proves that local communities are essential partners in legal protection and restoration of the right to a healthy environment.

• Storyline on the case (Digital Environmental Justice)
• Atrato River Decision T-622/16 of November 10, 2016

Share your thoughts with us! In your opinion, how does the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment materialise? Is it recognised in your country? Write your thoughts in the collaborative Mural here.

For more information on the resolution and how you can use it for your advocacy, please see section 1.7. What are the frameworks that protect and recognise the work of EHRDs?

Let’s now continue with the actors that make environmental rights exist: Environmental human rights defenders.