The Right to a Healthy Environment: Recognised as a Human Right but to What Extent Can Environmental Wrongs be Righted?

The right to a healthy environment has been recognised as a universal human right by both the UN General Assembly and the UN Human Rights Council in their recent resolutions. The wide recognition of the right at the national and regional levels, and now at the international level, demonstrates that it has become increasingly evident human rights and environmental protection are fundamentally interdependent. However, such an overwhelming recognition of the right to a healthy environment does not necessarily mean that the human rights-based approach to environmental protection is beyond controversy. There remains ambiguity surrounding the content of the right to a healthy environment, as well as criticism against such a recognition. More fundamentally, there exist systemic, ontological and ethical concerns that lie at the heart of human rights and the question of their suitability for addressing environmental wrongs. This article, by exploring the content of the right to a healthy environment, criticism around recognising the right as a human right, and concerns regarding the human rights-based approach to environmental protection, provides a theoretical analysis on the extent to which the global recognition of the right as a standalone human right could contribute to addressing environmental wrongs. In doing so, it argues while the UN recognition of the new right symbolises the broad consensus on human rights obligations to protect the environment, such a human rights-based approach is not a panacea for addressing environmental wrongs in a global sphere. Despite this, recognising the right to a healthy environment as an independent human right initiates a paradigm shift by incorporating environmental interests to the traditionally anthropocentric and individualised human rights system