CYIL vol. 15 (2024)

PETRA BAUMRUK Secondly, with respect to the Rio Declaration, it is obvious that the entitlement of human beings to live in harmony with nature, as maintained in Principle 1 of the Declaration, cannot be asserted as constituting a right to a healthy environment. 65 In this respect, Dinah Shelton noted, that the Declaration’s failure to put greater emphasis on human rights, was indicative of uncertainty and debate about the proper place of human rights law in the development of international environmental law. 66 In addition, both the Stockholm Declaration and the Rio Declaration constitute solely “soft law” documents. Thirdly, since 1994, after Ksentini’s report on “Human Rights and the Environment”, there has been an expectation in both the human rights and the environmental legal community that this link would be discussed in more depth at policy making levels. In 2002, experts from around the world were invited to assess the link between human rights and the environment and to clarify the scope of this linkage. 67 This was the first time that the two UN bodies, the then Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), decided to combine their efforts to explore the link between these two important fields. However, the meeting ended with the issuing of a very poorly worded statement. 68 Lastly, the two regional treaties can be said to approach the right to environment differently. The African Charter, on one hand, makes a linkage between the environment and the development, while, on the other hand, the Protocol of the ACHR speaks of a “healthy environment.” 5. Conflicting rights The potential conflicts between the right to a healthy environment and state sovereignty over natural resources , on the one hand, and the right to development , on the other, becomes of great relevance when discussing the human right to an adequate environment. It is often taken for granted that human beings have a right to use natural resources and environmental amenities for human purposes. This assumption, with an ever-increasing human population and greater use of energy and materials, has resulted in disruption of the environment and depletion of resources. More significantly, disturbances of the Earth’s environmental processes and distortion of the ecosystem have begun leading to conflicts between the right to use resources and the right to a healthy environment. Numerous human 65 MÜLLEROVÁ, Hana: Aktuální otázky zakotvení lidského práva na životní prostředí v mezinárodním právu. [Current issues of enshrining the human right to the environment in international law]. p. 27. 66 SHELTON, Dinah L.: What Happened in Rio to Human Rights? Yearbook of International Environmental Law , Vol. 3, 1992, p. 85 (What Happened in Rio to Human Rights?). 67 UN Environment Programme/Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Meeting of Experts on Human Rights and Environment, 2002. Background paper. Available online at: http://www.unhchr.ch/ environmnet/index.html (accessed 6 November 2022). 68 The Conclusions of the 2002 Meeting of Experts on Human Rights and the Environment, 16 January 2002. Available online at: http://www.unhchr.ch/environment/conclusions.html (accessed 6 November 2022). Similarly, in the Johannesburg Declaration, adopted after the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, only one sentence took account of the link between the environment and human rights. Paragraph 152: ‘[a] knowledge the consideration being given to the possible relationship between environment and human rights […]’ (emphasis added). See World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, 2002. Available online at: http://www.un.org/jsummit/html/documents/summit_docs/2309_planfinal.htm (accessed 7 November 2022).

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