The United Nations (UN) Committee on the Rights of the Child recently
published authoritative guidance concerning children’s rights with respect to the environment amidst growing concerns of climate change. The guidance entreats member states to promptly implement intervention measures that address the negative impacts of environmental degradation and protect children’s right to a clean and healthy world.
The guidance delineates various specific rights safeguarded under the convention, including the right to life, survival, and development; the right to the highest attainable standard of health; and the right to social security and an adequate standard of living. It emphasizes that children’s rights, like all human rights, are indivisible, interdependent and interrelated. Certain rights, such as the right to education, play a crucial role in safeguarding children’s rights in relation to the environment.
The guidance further enumerates the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment and mandates member states to safeguard this right by implementing several actions. Such actions include improving air quality, ensuring access to safe water and sanitation, transforming industrial agriculture and fisheries, phasing out the use of coal, oil and natural gas, and regulating and eradicating the production, sale, use and release of toxic substances that disproportionally harm children’s health.
In addition to referencing the
Paris Agreement,
a treaty established in 2015 to limit global warming, the guidance calls on high-income and developed countries to spearhead the implementation of long-term solutions to combat the effects of climate change. It pointedly clarifies that “short-term mitigation measures,” which only “delay a rapid phase out of fossil fuels,” are likely to cause more harm to children by resulting in higher cumulative emissions.
The guidance was developed with the consultation of an
advisory team
of thirteen children and a considerable 16,331
contributions
from children across 121 countries through an online questionnaire.
This publication was applauded by various environmental legal experts. Sébastien Duyck, a senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law,
regarded
the guidance as a “very timely legal instrument to support children and youth as they demand action to address climate change and other environmental crises.”
In a related note, there has been an increasing acknowledgment of children’s right to a clean environment as demonstrated in a recent Montana court ruling in favor of youth plaintiffs – it found a state law to be infringing on their right to a
“clean and healthful environment.”