Right to a healthy environment

The enjoyment of rights, especially those of children and young people, are closely connected to the enjoyment of a clean, safe and healthy (physical) environment.

Children are more vulnerable to the risks caused by the triple planetary crisis: climate change, pollution (chemicals, toxic substances and waste) and biodiversity loss because of their evolving physical and mental development. Climate change contributes to extreme weather events, water scarcity and food insecurity, air pollution or vector-borne and infectious diseases, that promote poverty, migration or flight and traumas.

Almost all the substantive rights of the child may be affected by the triple planetary crises: the right to life, survival and development, health, food, water and sanitation, education, rest, leisure and play, housing, identity and nationality, as well as freedom from all forms of violence. With the ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, all states but one have committed themselves to doing everything in their power to protect the rights and best interests of the child, this is especially now urgent in the face of the triple planetary crises.

In recent years the topic around environmental rights/ Right to a clean, safe and healthy environment has become an existential issue that has been driven by children and younger people in particular. The World Future Council supports and accompanies the demands for a right for a safe, clean, healthy, and sustainable environment together with its partners, has campaigned for the realisation of this right. After all, an intact natural environment is also a basic prerequisite for future generations to find a living environment and be able to exercise their rights as we do today.