The ACT will become the first Australian jurisdiction to recognise a healthy environment as a human right, after Greens MLA Jo Clay’s motion passed the Legislative Assembly this afternoon.
The Right to a Healthy Environment will be included in the ACT’s Human Rights Act 2004.
“Our natural environment is everything – it is our air, our water, our soils, our biodiversity, our ecosystems, our climate,” Ms Clay said. “If we are to live, and to live well” – with healthy and sustainably produced food, clean water, and a healthy planet – “that environment needs to be healthy and free from pollutants.”
Tara Cheyne, ACT Minister for Human Rights, said the government was “exploring the implications of codifying” the right to a healthy environment into the Act. An inter-directorate committee will meet monthly.
The Justice and Community Safety Directorate is considering potential models and talking to community stakeholders – including the Australian Human Rights Commission, the Conservation Council ACT Region, the Environmental Defenders Office (ACT office), GreenLaw, the ACT Council of Social Service (ACTCOSS), and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elected Body.
The government will conduct a full public consultation on the right to a healthy environment later this year.
It will report back to the Assembly by the end of the year with the substance of these consultations and a timeframe to introduce the right.
Ms Clay said the right to a healthy environment was linked to a range of existing rights in the Human Rights Act, including the right to life, the right to culture and other rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, and the right to freely express yourself.
“The inclusion of the right to a healthy environment strengthens existing rights, and recognises what we have long known – people cannot live a healthy life, unless the environment we live in is healthy too.”
Introducing a right to a healthy environment would mean that the ACT Government bodies responsible for environmental protection – like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate – would look to this right when they assessed the environmental impacts of a project or enforced environmental undertakings.
Ms Clay said her motion followed the ACT Government declaring a climate emergency in 2019, a commitment to rapid, science-based action to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and a transition to net-zero emissions
Ms Clay noted that no other state or territory in Australia had this right yet, but most UN member countries did. 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 human rights”.
The right can be found in the South African, Greek, Kenyan, and Peruvian Constitutions; in Italian, Indian, and Guatemalan national and provincial laws; and in regional agreements in the American Convention on Human Rights and the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights.
