The Human Right to a Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment the Ocean and Human Rights

A/HRC/RES/58/16View PDF

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

A Resolution of the Human Rights Council, under agenda item 3 Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development, published in 2025.

What subjects does this mandate have?

7 subjects

Environment Environmental Protection Human Rights International Obligations Marine Ecosystems Oceans Sustainable Development

What’s in this document?

39 operative paragraphs

Welcomes the work undertaken by the Special Rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, including in the implementation of the mandate, the comprehensive, transparent and inclusive consultations conducted with relevant stakeholders, and her thematic reports;

Also welcomes the work of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the issue of human rights and the environment, including its collaboration with the Secretary-General, the United Nations Environment Programme and other key partners, and its engagement with multilateral environmental agreements, such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification and the Convention on Biological Diversity;

Further welcomes the work undertaken by the United Nations Environment Programme, the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women in support of the mandate of the Special Rapporteur, and in helping to clarify the relationship between human rights and the environment;

Encourages States to engage constructively in the United Nations Ocean Conference, to be held in Nice, France in June 2025, and to consider the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment in its proceedings and outcomes;

Calls upon States:

To respect, protect and fulfil human rights, including in all actions undertaken to address environmental challenges, including climate change, marine biodiversity loss, pollution and land degradation;

To adopt and implement strong laws ensuring, among other things, the rights to participation, to access to information and to justice, including to an effective remedy, in environmental matters;

To facilitate public awareness and the participation of civil society, women, children, youth, Indigenous Peoples, peasants, local communities, small-scale fisherfolk and coastal communities, older persons, persons with disabilities, migrants and others who depend directly on biodiversity and ecosystem services in the environmental decision-making process, including regulatory processes, by protecting all human rights, including the rights to freedom of expression and to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;

To implement fully their obligations to respect, protect and fulfil human rights without discrimination of any kind, including in the application of environmental laws and policies;

To promote a safe and enabling environment in which individuals, civil society organizations, including environmental human right defenders and those working on human rights and environmental and marine issues can operate free from threats, hindrance and insecurity;

To provide for effective remedies for human rights violations and abuses, including those relating to the enjoyment of the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, in accordance with their international obligations;

To establish, maintain and strengthen effective legal and institutional frameworks to regulate the activities of public and private actors in order to prevent, reduce and remedy harm to biodiversity and ecosystems, taking into account human rights obligations and commitments relating to the enjoyment of a clean, healthy and sustainable environment;

To implement, in all their activities, the precautionary principle or precautionary approach, as appropriate, for the effective protection of marine and coastal ecosystems;

To take into account human rights obligations and commitments relating to the enjoyment of a clean, healthy and sustainable environment in the implementation of and follow-up to the Sustainable Development Goals, including Goal 14, on life below water, and Goal 6, on clean water and sanitation, bearing in mind the integrated and multisectoral nature of the latter;

To respect and promote the knowledge of Indigenous Peoples, in accordance with their free, prior and informed consent, as well as the traditional knowledge of local communities and local knowledge systems in ocean governance;

To increase funding and support for, and collaboration with, grass-roots women’s organizations working on environmental and human rights issues, and for the implementation of gender action plans under multilateral environmental agreements;

To mobilize and allocate adequate, predictable and sustainable funding for technical assistance and capacity-building initiatives in supporting legal and policy development, institutional strengthening, knowledge-sharing and multi-stakeholder cooperation to effectively implement the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment;

Encourages States:

To adopt ecosystem-based integrated, intersecting and holistic national and local policies and an effective legal framework that acknowledges the need to protect and restore the ocean for the enjoyment of the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment;

To address compliance with human rights obligations relating to the enjoyment of the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment in the framework of human rights mechanisms, including the universal periodic review, and the submission of State party reports to relevant United Nations human rights treaty bodies;

To build capacities for efforts to protect the environment in order to fulfil their human rights obligations and commitments, and to enhance cooperation with other States, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the rest of the United Nations system and other relevant international and regional organizations, agencies, convention secretariats and programmes, and relevant non-State stakeholders, including civil society, national human rights institutions and business, on the further development and implementation of the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, in accordance with their respective mandates;

To cooperate in formulating and developing rules, standards, recommended practices and procedures based on human rights and the best available scientific knowledge, to counter marine pollution, integrating the traditional knowledge of Indigenous Peoples, small-scale fisherfolk and local communities;

To cooperate with other States to advance the protection, conservation and remediation of the ocean and coastal areas, including through the implementation of international law and the incorporation of international human rights law obligations, standards and guidelines for ocean management;

To explore ways to incorporate information on human rights and the environment, including the marine environment, in school curricula, in order to teach current and future generations to act as agents of change, including by taking into account the traditional knowledge of Indigenous Peoples;

To seek to ensure that projects supported by environmental finance mechanisms respect all human rights;

To collect disaggregated data on the effects of environmental harm, including the loss of biodiversity and the decline of ecosystem services, on persons in vulnerable situations;

To promote and accelerate human rights-based environmental action that is gender-responsive and includes gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, and takes into consideration the vulnerability of ecosystems and the needs of persons and communities in vulnerable situations;

To continue to share good practices in fulfilling human rights obligations relating to the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment through the good practices database maintained by the Special Rapporteur;

To facilitate expert exchange of knowledge and ideas, building synergies between the protection of human rights and the protection of the environment, and to promote coherence among different policy areas, bearing in mind an integrated and multisectoral approach and considering that efforts to protect the environment must fully respect other human rights obligations, including those relating to gender equality;

To strengthen their efforts to protect biodiversity, including by updating and implementing their national biodiversity strategies and action plans, thereby contributing to the achievement of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework under the Convention on Biological Diversity;

To build capacity within the judicial sector to understand the relationship between human rights and the environment;

To foster a responsible private business sector and to encourage corporate sustainability reporting while respecting the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and environmental standards, in accordance with relevant international agreements;

To ratify the Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction;

Recognizes the important role played by individuals and civil society organizations, including human rights defenders and environmental human right defenders, in the promotion and protection of human rights as they relate to the enjoyment of the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, including biodiversity and ecosystems;

Also recognizes the important role of national human rights institutions to support and promote the enjoyment of the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment;

Encourages relevant United Nations agencies, funds and programmes, other international organizations, treaty bodies, academia and civil society organizations to promote the implementation of the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment;

Stresses the need for enhanced cooperation among States, the United Nations Environment Programme, the United Nations Development Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the Office of the High Commissioner, the World Health Organization, the International Organization for Migration, the International Labour Organization and other relevant international and regional organizations, agencies, conventions and programmes, in accordance with their respective mandates, including by regularly exchanging knowledge and ideas and building synergies for the respect, promotion and protection of the human right to a clean healthy and sustainable environment, bearing in mind an integrated and multisectoral approach;

Calls upon all States to conserve, protect and restore healthy ecosystems and biodiversity and to ensure their sustainable management and use by applying a human rights-based approach that emphasizes participation, inclusion, transparency and accountability in the management of natural resources;

Decides to remain seized of the matter, in accordance with its annual programme of work.

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

What subjects does this mandate have?

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