Right to a healthy environment

The right to a healthy environment or the right to a sustainable and healthy environment is a human right advocated by human rights organizations and environmental organizations to protect the ecological systems that provide human health. The right is interconnected with other health-focused human rights, such as the human right to water and sanitation, right to food and right to health. The right to a healthy environment uses a human rights approach to protect environmental quality as opposed to legal theory developed for the rights of nature which tries to extend the rights created for humans or other legal entities to nature.
The right creates an obligation of the state to regulate and enforce environmental laws, control pollution, and otherwise provide justice and protections for communities harmed by environmental problems. The right to a healthy environment has been an important right for creating environmental legal precedents for climate change litigation and other environmental issues.
The right to a healthy environment is at the core of the international approach to human rights and climate change. International agreements that support this right include the 1972 Stockholm Declaration, the 1992 Rio Declaration, and the more recent Global Pact for the Environment. Over 150 states in the UN have recognized the right in some form via legislation, litigation, constitutional law, treaty law or other legal authority. The African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, American Convention on Human Rights, and Escazu Agreement, each include a right to a healthy environment. Other human rights frameworks, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child refer to environmental issues as they relate to the framework's focus, in this case children's rights.
UN Special Rapporteurs on Human Rights and the Environment John H. Knox (2012–2018) and David R. Boyd (2018–) have made recommendations on how to formalize these rights in international law. This was endorsed by a number of committees at the UN level, as well as local legal communities such as the New York City Bar, in 2020.
The effects of climate change on human rights are presented by OHCHR in a fact sheet with the most frequently asked questions on the subject.