We need to save the Earth. We can do this by altering our actions to have fewer disturbing environmental impacts on the Earth. Sustaining a healthy environment inevitably leads to an improved quality of human life. Friends of the Earth International, the world’s largest environmental network, defines environmental justice as “access to the unspoiled natural resources that enable survival, including land, shelter, food, water and air.” Because protecting the environment includes protecting the lives of individuals, I believe that environmental rights are human rights. These rights are described specifically in the 30 articles of the Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted in the United Nations General Assembly in 1948.
Historically, despite the close relationship between environmental degradation and human suffering, human rights advocates and environmental activists have gone their separate ways, with neither addressing the human impacts of environmental abuse. As a result, victims of environmental harm remain unprotected by the laws and mechanisms established by governments to protect human rights. Recent partnerships between the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights and the United Nations Environmental Program have begun to address this issue, focusing on the ideas that the environment is a prerequisite for the enjoyment of human rights and that the right to a safe, healthy and ecologically-balanced environment is itself a basic human right.
Governments and international organizations are needed to regulate these rights. In 2003, 250 delegates attended the International Conference of Environmental Rights and Human Rights in Cartagena, Columbia. They issued a declaration discussing that “clean water, air and land have been taken away from disinherited people around the world”, and that “urban pollution is concentrated in areas where the most impoverished live”. More recently, the UN Human Rights Council has also begun to pass resolutions relating to the linkages between human rights and climate change.
A national example of the need for environmental regulations is with hydraulic fracturing, more commonly known as “fracking.” Fracking is the fracturing of shale rock by pumping chemical-laden pressurized liquids into the ground, to produce natural gas. A 2004 report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stated that fracking posed minimal harm to drinking water. However, soon after the report was published, speculation came out about water contamination cases being excluded from the report, possibly due to industry and political influence. In 2009, hydraulic fracturing fluid, described by the manufacturers as a “potential carcinogen”, contaminated water wells in Dimock, Pennsylvania. More than a dozen families were left with unsafe drinking water. Fracking is just one case of how inadequate environmental regulations can hurt vulnerable communities.
Many more examples exist at the international level including the suffering caused to indigenous groups in Nigeria and Ecaudor, from oil and gas drilling or from constructions of large dams.
Regulating of our environment can have very direct effects on the lives of people. By protecting the environment, we are helping to protect people who are often in situations that render them unable to protect themselves. No person should be deprived of their homes, health and overall well-being, as these are their universally recognized human rights. The environment affects us much more than we realize, and it is through the careful managing of both the environment and its resources that we can help protect and save not only the earth, but people too.
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