You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!
Greta Thunberg, UN Climate Action Summit, New York, 23 September 2019
Environment and children’s rights
Human beings are part of life on earth, and the earth’s environment affects all aspects of human life, including human rights. The 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment formally recognised the link between the environment and human rights, acknowledging that “man’s environment, the natural and the manmade, are essential to his well-being and to the enjoyment of basic human rights – even the right to life itself”.
Environmental rights are often presented as collective rights, meaning that they are rights that belong to groups of people or whole societies rather than just to individuals. In addition to the right to a healthy environment, collective rights also include the right to peace, to sustainable development, to communication, and to being able share in the common heritage of humankind. Collective rights such as the right to a healthy environment, are an acknowledgement that human rights exist not only for individuals in a political and social system but for all people united as fellow beings in interdependent systems that transcend nation states. For example, global warming affects all living things, regardless of which country they are in. Just as each individual must respect the intrinsic value of fellow human beings, they must also respect the value of all fellow beings: animals, plants and the ecosystems in which we all exist.
The environment affects people’s human rights both positively and negatively. It plays an essential role in sustaining human life, providing the raw materials for our food, industry and development. However, environmental hazards, such as excess radiation or contaminated drinking water, can threaten human health and even life itself. If the cause is not accidental, or was preventable, these may also be human rights violations.
The UN Special Rapporteur on the issue of human rights obligations relating to the enjoyment of a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment explained in a report how children’s rights and the environment are connected:1
Right to life, health and development: environmental harms can risk the life of children and pregnant women, cause preventable death and lifelong health problems. Children need a healthy environment in which to grow and thrive.
Right to an adequate standard of living: the lack of clean air and water, the exposure to hazardous chemicals and waste, the effects of climate change and the loss of biodiversity violates the children’s right to a standard of living adequate for the child’s physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development and all the rights derived from it: the rights to food, housing, and safe and clean water and sanitation.
Right to play and recreation: children should engage in play and recreation activities in a healthy, safe environment. Some children face dangerous conditions when they go outside to play, including polluted air and water, open waste sites, toxic substances and the lack of access to safe green spaces and natural environments, while other children cannot even leave home without exposing themselves to environmental harms.
Right to education and information: according to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the education of children should be directed to the development of respect for the natural environment. Furthermore, children should have access to information that helps them to understand the environmental effect on their rights, how they can protect themselves and what role they can take to protect the environment. Such information should be provided in child-friendly language and in an accessible format.
Right to be heard: children are not experts in science, and nor are adults, but they know the circumstances of their life much better than adults do. Respect for the views of the children about long-term environmental challenges such as climate change and the loss of biodiversity is arguable, as it will shape the world in which they will spend their lives. Children can play a pivotal role by promoting environmentally-conscious lifestyles among their peers, in their community or in the society.
Environmental issues in Europe
Europe, as with the rest of the globe, faces several major environmental threats which will almost certainly have an impact on future generations:
Climate change, caused by excessive carbon emissions over centuries, is already having an effect on every region of the world. In recent years, Europe has seen effects such as drought, flooding, extreme heat waves, and wildfires as a result of global warming and changes in weather patterns.
Soil degradation and water erosion worldwide are threatening food supplies: the UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates we may have only 60 years of harvests left. The problem is acute in Europe too: in some parts of Central and Eastern Europe, soil deterioration is now so severe the land cannot be cultivated.
Wildlife is dying out across Europe, and biodiversity is severely threatened. Birds are in decline and a recent study showed that flying insects on nature reserves in Germany have declined by 76% in 27 years.
Industrial fishing is leading certain species of fish – such as the bluefin tuna – to the edge of extinction. Overfishing is part of the problem, the use of medicines and disinfectants, causing marine pollution, is another.
Air pollution from heavy industry and fossil fuels directly affects human health and all living things. A 2014 report by the European Environmental Agency found that pollution from cars, power plants, households and agriculture contributes to nearly 467,000 premature deaths across the continent.
Water scarcity and drought is an increasingly frequent and widespread phenomenon across the European continent.
Overconsumption has a negative impact on the environment. If everyone on the planet consumed the equivalent of the average European, two planet Earths would be necessary.
Domestic and industrial waste is filling the world’s land and oceans. In Europe, total annual waste is more than 2.5 billion tons. Of this, only about a third is recycled, while the rest is burned or sent to landfill.
Genetically modified organisms (GMOs), whose genetic material has been altered by the introduction of a modified gene, can have long-term consequences on human health, the environment and sustainable farming.
What are the main environmental concerns in your region? How do they affect local people? How do they affect children’s rights?
Children and the environment
Children are exposed to many different environments that have a profound influence on their growth and development. Environmental exposures, both adverse and health-promoting, do not work in isolation but interact with social and nutritional determinants of health to influence children’s health and well-being.
Inheriting the world: The atlas of children’s health and the environment, 2017 (WHO)
In 2017, the World Health Organisation (WHO) published an updated version of a report first issued in 2004 on the challenges to children’s environmental health. The report noted that in 2015, over a quarter of the deaths of 5.9 million children who died before reaching their fifth birthday could have been prevented through addressing environmental risks.
The WHO classes some of the environmental risks as ‘traditional’, and these include air pollution, unclean water and poor sanitation. Such risks are particularly common in developing regions. Other risks are classed as ‘emerging’, and they are mostly products of the industrialised world. These include chemicals – from pesticides, plastics, and other manufactured goods – electronic waste, and climate change.
What are the major environmental issues affecting the health of children in your community?
Sustainable development
In 1983, ‘sustainable development’ was defined by the World Commission on Environment and Development (later the Brundtland Commission) as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.
Since the Commission met, there have been various global initiatives to address increasingly pressing environmental issues, and the notion of sustainable development has itself undergone development. It is widely recognised as having at least three dimensions: social justice and economic development, as well as environmental protection. In other words, sustainability is understood to be not just about conserving the environment, but also about learning to live in respectful relationships with each other while ensuring economic security for all.
What are the main environmental concerns in your region? How do they affect local people? How do they affect children’s rights?
