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MEPIELAN E-Bulletin is a digital academic and practitioner newsletter of the MEPIELAN Centre, launched in 2010.  It features insight articles, reflective opinions, specially selected documents and cases, book reviews as well as news on thematic topics of direct interest of MEPIELAN Centre and on the activities and role of MEPIELAN Centre. Its content bridges theory and practice perspectives of relational international law, international environmental law and participatory governance , and international negotiating process, thus serving the primary goal of Centre: to develop an integrated, inter-disciplinary, relational, context-related and sustainably effective governance approach creating, protecting and advancing international common interest for the present and future generations. Providing a knowledge- and information-sharing platform and a scholarly forum, the Bulletin promotes innovative ideas and enlightened critical views, contributing to a broader scholarly debate on important issues of international common interest. The audience of the Bulletin includes academics, practitioners, researchers, university students, international lawyers, officials and personnel of international organizations and institutional arrangements, heads and personnel of national authorities at all levels (national, regional and local), and members of the civil society at large.

The UN General Assembly Resolution 76/300 “on “The Human Right to a Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment”: Marking the Road for a New Age of Sustainability Governance

May 9, 2023

On 28 July 2022, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) adopted the landmark Resolution 76/300 “: “The Human Right to a Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment”. Resolution 76/300 was adopted with overwhelming support: 161 votes in favour, zero against, and 8 abstentions (Belarus, Cambodia, China, Ethiopia, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Syria).

This unparalled recognition by the General Assembly (GA) of a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a human right (”right to a healthy environment”) marks a turning point in the development of sustainability governance, environmental democracy and the unearthing of the missing link between human rights and nature protection. It sends a powerful message that there is a widespread, worldwide support for this right, especially in view of the fact that the vast majority of States have already recognized it at national and international levels.

Recognition of the right to a healthy environment echoes the indispensable need and perspective for reigniting the fundamental expectation of citizenship requiring government to act in loyalty to the public for securing a sustainable future and protecting the interests of present and future generations. It empowers all people with a critical tool to hold their governments, big polluters and all those making decisions and undertaking environmental activities to account. Rights-based and equitable approaches to addressing and shaping governance of climate change, biodiversity and nature loss, and pollution are essential to stimulating a process embracing effective actions to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Importantly, they lay the foundations for thinking relationally, holistically and contextually in environmental law and governance and for building transformative societal change. They open up new horizons in  a societal trust management of nature, protecting the rights of nature in tandem with human rights fuelled by an inter-generational power.

For an analysis of the UNGA Resolution 76/300 in the process of building international common interest see ARTICLES: Raftopoulos E., Inter Folia Fulget: The UN General Assembly Resolution 76/300 of 28 July 2022 on “The Human Right to a Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment”

The text of the Resolution is reproduced below


United Nations A/RES/76/300 General Assembly Distr.: General 1 August 2022

Click to see the pdf


 

 

About the author

Evangelos Raftopoulos
Editor and Founding Director of MEPIELAN Centre | [email protected] | Author's Website

Professor Emeritus of International Law, Panteion University, Athens, Greece, Fellow, C-EENRG, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

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