Labour government under further pressure over the ECHR – this time, from 60 organisations

Over sixty organisations have written to UK government ministers ahead of a major meeting of the Council of Europe. They’re urging the Labour Party government to back proposals for an additional binding Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Specifically, it’s one that would finally recognise the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment.

ECHR: the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment

An Additional Protocol would strengthen the rights of all 675 million citizens living in Council of Europe member states. Recognition of the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment would harmonise standards in the region, provide legal certainty, strengthen domestic environmental legislation, protect vulnerable communities, and support environmental defenders.

It would also reaffirm the European Court of Human Rights’ legitimacy in addressing matters related to environmental rights. This would enable it to build on its significant and growing environmental jurisprudence, and improve the protection of lives and livelihoods for current and future generations.

Organisations including Friends of the Earth, Wildlife & Countryside Link, and the Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland (ERCS) coordinated the letter. It follows an intervention from UN appointed experts on human rights and the environment, who added their voice to the growing calls for an Additional Protocol recognising the right.

The UK government must back the right in the ECHR

On 13 May, the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers’ Drafting Group on Human Rights and the Environment will decide whether to move forward in drafting an Additional Protocol. This would formally recognise the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment in the ECHR. Countries including Portugal, Slovenia, Iceland, Georgia, and France back the move. However, the UK has yet to make its position clear.

The Council of Europe remains the only regional human rights system in the world that has not yet recognised this right. Though 42 of the 46 member states acknowledge it nationally or regionally, legal protection remains inconsistent across borders. This is despite the unanimous support expressed by Council of Europe Member States for the UN General Assembly’s 2022 resolution recognising the right to a healthy environment as a human right – and the collective commitment to strengthen the Council’s work on the human rights dimensions of environmental protection, reaffirmed at the 2023 Reykjavík Summit.

‘Environmental damage and human suffering are two sides of the same coin’

Kierra Box, trade and environmental regulation campaigner at Friends of the Earth England, Wales & Northern Ireland, said:

One look at the state of our sewage-filled rivers and seas will tell you just how critical a healthy environment is, not to mention the level of public outrage it’s caused. Yet companies who pollute with impunity, coupled with rising global temperatures, are threatening nature, undermining our human rights and putting people at risk. This is a chance for UK ministers to take a stand. Clean air, safe water and thriving wildlife are not luxuries, they are a human right and deserve legal recognition as such.

Chief officer at the Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland (ERCS) Shivali Fifield said:

We face the triple planetary crisis of climate breakdown, biodiversity loss, and the widespread pollution of our air, land and water. Environmental damage and human suffering are two sides of the same coin and Europe should guarantee legal protections for communities exposed to environmental harm if we are to address the root causes and intersections of social, environmental and climate injustice. We urge the UK government to demonstrate their commitment to upholding our human and environmental rights by voting to recognise our universal human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.

Senior policy officer at Wildlife & Countryside Link Niall Watson said:

Environmental inequality remains a major issue in the UK with millions of people living shorter, unhealthier lives because they are breathing polluted air, or don’t have access to greenspace which supports physical and mental health. Putting the right to a healthy environment in law would give local communities that are suffering from polluted air and rivers or losing access to local nature a greater ability to hold our leaders to account.

The UK Government must raise the bar for nature and our communities. Now is the time for the Government to stop paying lip service to what is needed and give its backing to Europe-wide recognition of the peoples’ right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.

Featured image via the Canary