Page 264 - Week 01 - Thursday, 10 February 2022
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look at storms and heatwaves, hail and fires—without engaging with the cause of those things. A healthy climate means healthy people and a healthy planet.
We frame the right to a healthy environment in the context of COVID and COVID lockdowns. The past two years have shown us how important access to nature and a healthy local environment is to our mental health and our wellbeing. People in the community tell me all the time that reconnection with nature is one of the few really positive aspects they have experienced during the pandemic. I feel exactly the same way. Lockdown and border closures were hard, but they made us all realise how beautiful our surroundings are. I stopped planning trips to the beach and fell in love with the hyperlocal.
The families in my street in Macquarie turned our local walkway into a mini golf course. Our kids started roving about during their hour of exercise. I joined thousands of others in Belconnen to walk and ride around the beautiful Lake Ginninderra and to paddle on it. It was transformative and it was entirely different to what we experienced when we were shut inside our homes and apartments unable to breathe the air during Black Summer. Our outside world is everything.
My motion also looks at the right to a healthy environment in the international context. In 2018 the Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment presented a list of framework principles. This is a really well-established body of work dealing with the need for a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment. The UN and international precedence show us that the public needs to be given information and education about their environment and what is impacting it. Governments need to assess the environmental impacts of all policies and projects and use this in decision-making. People need a democratic role in those government decisions so that they can contribute meaningfully. Those who are most vulnerable to environmental harm need particular protection. And everyone needs access to a remedy when their right to a healthy environment is violated.
In October last year the UN Human Rights Council formally recognised the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a human right that is important for the enjoyment of all human rights. The UN said that protecting our environment underpinned other human rights for current and future generations. This is not one more right that we need to recognise; it is actually the foundation for everything else. We cannot live healthy lives unless our environment is healthy.
I take great comfort in the fact that long after I am gone the Earth will still be here. I want to preserve it for my daughter and hers after that—I think we all do—but we need to make the right choices now if that is going to happen. This right is now legally recognised by the overwhelming majority of United Nations member states. It can be found in the constitutions of South Africa, Greece, Kenya and Peru; in national laws and at a provincial level in Italy, India and Guatemala; and in regional agreements in the American Convention on Human Rights and the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights.
This international work shows us that a right to a healthy environment must be more than mere words in an act. Implementation is key. Once again, the ACT is leading
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