Authored By: Adriel Lawrence
Manav Rachna University
Abstract
This article traces the normative evolution of the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. It evaluates the transformation of this right from a soft law principle which was first brought to world attention in Stockholm declaration of 1972 into a justiciable right. Through a doctrinal analysis of UN resolutions, regional treaties, and landmark judicial decisions, the article evinces how a synergistic interplay between international political consensus, and judicial activism has provided this right a legal substance. It scrutinizes key stages, including the UN General Assembly’s 2022 recognition (Resolution 76/300), the procedural guarantees of the Aarhus and Escazú agreements, the jurisprudence of the Dutch Supreme Court, the Strasbourg court (KlimaSeniorinnen), and the Advisory opinion of the International court of justice (july, 2025). The article concludes that while challenges in implementation and enforcement perpetuates, the right to a healthy environment is now a corporeal legal instrument for environmental protection, climate justice, and human dignity.
Introduction: The Imperative for a Rights-Based Approach to Environmental Protection
The contemporary international scenario is defined by what the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Filippo Grandi, has described as the “triple planetary crisis” of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution; collectively representing the single greatest threat to human rights worldwide. (The United Nations High Commissioner for Human (2022)) This crisis has exposed an ardent interdependence of human well-being and environmental integrity, riveting a re-evaluation of the traditional legal frameworks for environmental governance. In response, a legal evolution took place, shifting the paradigm from a state-centric model of environmental management to a human-centric, rights-based approach.
Initially, environmental protection was under the ambit of international environmental law, concerned with issues such as managing transboundary pollution between sovereign states. The evolution traced in this article shows a progressive “humanization” of the issue, where environmental degradation is understood not merely as a harm to the ecosystem but as a direct violation of fundamental human rights. This shift makes the individuals, state, and non-state actors realise that it is their obligation to respect, protect and promote human rights, including in all actions undertaken to address environmental challenges, transforming them from passive objects of environmental policy into active subjects of rights, capable of holding governments and other actors accountable (What Is the Right to a Healthy Environment?, 2023)
The analysis begins by first examining the normative origins of the right in foundational soft-law instruments, namely the 1972 Stockholm and 1992 Rio Declarations. Followed by the exploration of the global political affirmation of the right through recent landmark United Nations resolutions. Forbye, the article will detail the formal codification of the right in binding regional treaties. Finally, it will analyze how landmark judicial decisions from domestic, regional, and international courts have given the right legal teeth, making it a concrete and enforceable instrument for justice.
The Nascence of a Principle: Foundational Soft Law Instruments
The journey of the right to a healthy environment from a political aspiration to a legal norm began with the soft law, non-binding declarations. Despite the absence of legal enforceability, these instruments were critical in framing the conceptual connection between environmental quality and human dignity, providing the normative bedrock upon which all subsequent legal developments were built.
The 1972 Stockholm Declaration: The Normative Seed
The June 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm marked a watershed moment. For the first time on a global stage, the international community formally acknowledged the inextricable link between the environment and human well-being. The conference’s resulting declaration, though a soft-law instrument, planted the normative seed for a new human right. Principle 1 of the Stockholm Declaration states: “Man has the fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being, and he bears a solemn responsibility to protect and improve the environment for present and future generations”.
(Stockholm Declaration, 1972)
This language was revolutionary. It situated the view of the environment squarely within the discourse of human rights and dignity. By framing environmental quality as a prerequisite for “adequate conditions of life” and “dignity,” Principle 1 established the conceptual foundation for the right. (Nations, 1972) However, its aspirational character and non-binding status meant that its immediate legal impact was limited. It articulated a powerful principle but provided no mechanism for enforcement, setting the stage for a decades-long process of legal evolution to give this principle concrete form and effect.
The 1992 Rio Declaration: Embedding Procedural Rights and Sustainable Development
Twenty years later the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro worked on the foundation laid down by Stockholm and refined the relationship between human rights and the environment within the framework of sustainable development. The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development reiterated the sustainable focus, with Principle 4 stating, “In order to achieve sustainable development, environmental protection shall constitute an integral part of the development process and cannot be considered in isolation from it”.(Nations, 1992)
The Declaration’s most significant and lasting contribution to the development of the right to a healthy environment, however, was its articulation of procedural rights. Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration asserted that “environmental issues are best handled with the participation of all concerned citizens” and established what would become the three essential pillars for the right’s future enforceability:
- Access to Information: Each individual shall have appropriate access to information concerning the environment that is held by public authorities.
- Participation in Decision-making: Individuals shall have the opportunity to participate in decision-making processes.
- Access to Justice: Effective access to judicial and administrative proceedings, including redress and remedy, shall be provided. (Nations, 1992)
The codification of these procedural rights actually proved to be a perfect masterstroke in the right’s evolution. It produced a legal architecture for enforcement before the substantive content of the right to a healthy environment was agreed by every nation. This allowed civil society and individuals to begin using legal tools demanding information, and challenging decisions in court on procedural grounds, long before a standalone substantive right was globally recognized. These procedural safeguards helped kickstart the legal conversation. They empowered activists and allowed important precedents to form, which later played a key role in arguing for the actual substance of the right
III. Global Recognition: The Political Tipping Point
After decades of development at regional level, the right to a healthy environment reached a global political tipping point in the early 2020s. Landmark resolutions from the United Nations’ principal human rights body and its plenary assembly sessions transformed the right’s status in the international political arena and provided powerful new impetus for its enforcement.
UN Human Rights Council Resolution 48/13 (2021) and UN General Assembly Resolution 76/300 (2022)
In October 2021, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) adopted Resolution 48/13, which in its preambular paragraph under page 3, for the first time recognized the “right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a human right”. (Nations, 2021) This historic step was the culmination of years of advocacy by civil society, UN Special Rapporteurs, and a core group of states. (Zamfir, 2021)The resolution passed with a strong majority of 43 votes in favour, none against, and 4 abstentions, signalling a decisive shift in the international community’s position.(Universal Rights Group, 2023)
This momentum carried over to the UN General Assembly (UNGA), which in July 2022 adopted Resolution 76/300, affirming the HRC’s recognition on a global scale. (Resolution Adopted by the General Assembly on 28 July 2022) The UNGA vote was overwhelming: 161 states in favour, none against, and only 8 abstentions (Belarus,Cambodia,China,Russia,Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Ethiopia and Syria) (Universal Rights Group, 2023)This near-unanimous support demonstrated a global political consensus that the time had come to formally acknowledge the right.
From Principle to Law: Codification and Constitutionalisation
The global political recognition of the right to a healthy environment did not occur in a vacuum. It was preceded and reinforced by the formal incorporation of the right into binding legal instruments at regional levels.
Regional Treaty Law: Creating Binding Obligations
Regional human rights systems have often been at the forefront of legally recognizing environmental rights. Two instruments are particularly noteworthy:
- The Aarhus Convention (1998): The UNECE Convention is the key instrument for the pan-European region. It effectively operationalized the procedural rights that were outlined in Rio’s Principle 10, transforming them into a set of binding legal obligations. (Lavrysen,2009) The Convention’s “three pillars” create a robust framework for government accountability, transparency, and responsiveness, granting the public clear rights and establishing minimum standards for their implementation.(Lavrysen, 2009)
- The Escazú Agreement (2018): The Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean is a groundbreaking treaty. It not only incorporates the three Aarhus pillars but goes further, making it the first environmental treaty in the world to include specific, binding provisions for the protection of environmental human rights defenders.(REGIONAL AGREEMENT ON ACCESS TO INFORMATION, PUBLIC PARTICIPATION AND JUSTICE IN ENVIRONMENTAL MATTERS IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIB, 2018) This provision is of critical importance in a region that is among the most dangerous for environmental activists, thereby addressing a crucial gap in international law.(Dávila, 2023)
Judicial Enforcement: Giving the Right Teeth
Courts at the domestic, regional, and international levels have become the ultimate arbiters, interpreting and applying the right in ways that have compelled state action and given the right tangible legal force. This judicial activism has been instrumental in defining the scope of state duties and ensuring accountability.
Domestic Climate Litigation: The Urgenda Precedent
The case of Urgenda Foundation v. The State of the Netherlands stands as a seminal moment in climate litigation and the enforcement of environmental human rights. In this case, a civil society organization and 900 citizens sued the Dutch government, arguing that its climate policies were insufficient to protect them from the dangers of climate change.(Urgenda Foundation v. The Netherlands, 2018)
The Dutch Supreme Court, in its final judgment in 2019, ordered the state to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 25 percent by the end of 2020 compared to 1990 levels.(Climate Case Explained – Urgenda, n.d.) While formally grounded in the Dutch civil code’s “duty of care,” the Court explicitly used Articles 2 (right to life) and 8 (right to respect for private and family life) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) as key interpretive guides to define the scope of that duty.(Urgenda Foundation v. The Netherlands, 2018) The Court found that the state has a positive obligation under these articles to protect its citizens from the real and imminent threat of climate change. This case demonstrated the powerful “reflex effect” of international human rights law on domestic legal interpretation and marked one of the first times a national court had ordered a government to adopt a specific, science-based climate policy, thereby directly translating a human rights obligation into a quantifiable state duty.(Urgenda Foundation v. The Netherlands, 2018)
Regional Human Rights Courts: The “Greening” of the ECHR
The legal ground broken by the Dutch courts was significantly widened by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in its 2024 landmark Grand Chamber judgment in Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland. The case was brought by an association of senior Swiss women who argued that their government’s inadequate climate policies violated their rights, making them particularly vulnerable to climate-induced heatwaves.(ECtHR’s Landmark Case, 2024)
The ECtHR ruled that Switzerland had indeed violated Article 8 of the ECHR (right to respect for private and family life).(ECtHR’s Landmark Case, 2024) The judgment was monumental because it established, for the first time by a major international human rights court, that states have a positive obligation under existing human rights law to adopt and effectively implement measures to combat climate change. The Court went beyond a general declaration, specifying concrete requirements for state action. It held that effective climate governance under Article 8 requires states to set clear timelines for achieving carbon neutrality, quantify a national carbon budget, and establish binding intermediate greenhouse gas reduction targets. (Bookman, 2024) By doing so, the ECtHR moved the right from a general principle to a set of concrete, judicially reviewable state duties, effectively “greening” the ECHR and creating a powerful precedent for all 46 member states of the Council of Europe.(ECtHR’s Landmark Case, 2024)
The World Court’s Stance: The ICJ’s 2025 Advisory Opinion on Climate Change
The apex of this judicial trend came with the 2025 Advisory Opinion on climate change from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. Requested by the UN General Assembly, the ICJ’s unanimous opinion provided the highest level of judicial authority on the legal obligations of states concerning climate change.
(Burgstaller et al., 2025)
The ICJ confirmed that states have binding obligations under multiple sources of international law, including climate treaties, customary international law, and human rights law, to protect the climate system from greenhouse gas emissions.(Burgstaller et al., 2025) Crucially, the Court explicitly recognized the link between environmental protection and human rights, stating in page 115, that “the full enjoyment of human rights cannot be ensured without the protection of the climate system and other parts of the environment”.(OBLIGATIONS OF STATES IN RESPECT OF CLIMATE CHANGE, 2025) The opinion affirmed that states have a duty of due diligence to prevent significant environmental harm, which includes regulating the activities of private actors.(Burgstaller et al., 2025) It also confirmed that states could face legal consequences, including an obligation to make reparations, for causing significant harm to the climate system.(OBLIGATIONS OF STATES IN RESPECT OF CLIMATE CHANGE, 2025)
These judicial decisions do not exist in isolation; they represent a powerful convergence of legal reasoning across different jurisdictions and levels of law. The Dutch Supreme Court’s use of the ECHR to interpret its national law was a foundational step. This was later validated and expanded upon by the ECtHR, the authoritative interpreter of that very treaty. The ICJ’s advisory opinion then elevated this reasoning to the global level, confirming that such obligations exist for all states under the broader umbrella of international law. Each decision reinforces the others, creating a mutually supportive body of global jurisprudence. This convergence is effectively hardening what was once soft law, solidifying the right to a healthy environment and its corresponding state obligations into a robust and coherent legal norm.
Conclusion: An Enforceable Right for a Sustainable Future
Over the past 50 years, the right to a healthy environment has undergone a synergistic interplay between these different legal and political arenas and transformed the right from a lofty ideal into a dynamic and justiciable right. Through political affirmation at the UN and subsequent precedents, it has become a maturing, enforceable legal standard.
Landmark cases like Urgenda and KlimaSeniorinnen confirm that states have concrete, justiciable obligations to protect citizens from environmental harm, empowering civil society to demand accountability.
Despite this progress, significant challenges persist. A vast gap remains between legal recognition and effective implementation. Ensuring corporate accountability, attributing responsibility for transboundary harm like climate change, and protecting endangered environmental defenders are formidable hurdles.
The legal foundation is now stronger than ever, making this right an essential component for achieving climate justice, protecting biodiversity, and upholding human dignity for a sustainable future.
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