CYIL vol. 15 (2024)

PETRA BAUMRUK international community in preserving the ecological basis for human civilization. 74 T he principle of sustainable development, therefore, places limitations on national sovereignty in the interests of conservation and environment. Moreover, it provides a principle by which the governments of sovereign states are held accountable to their own people for the manner in which they handle their natural resources. 75 It is obvious that increased development and the use of natural resources regardless of the consequences cannot be allowed forever. Human demands on the Earth’s environment need to be significantly reduced whereas the capacity and quantity of natural resources is being diminished or even damaged permanently. Furthermore, development strategies and programs need to be more clearly established since the damage caused to the environment may result in human rights being affected. Thus, the potential conflict between state sovereignty over natural resources and the right to development, with the right to a healthy and adequate environment, for human beings, is patent. What is more, these potential conflicts can be said to inflict the gradual evolvement of an independent and clearly defined right to a healthy environment at the global level. 6. Conclusions This we know: the earth does not belong to man: man belongs to the earth […] All things are connected like the blood which unites one family […] whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life: he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. - Chief Seattle in 1854 76 The forgoing discussion surveyed the continuous debate and the developments throughout the last decades (since 1972, when the first formal recognition of such a right was introduced in the Stockholm Declaration) that have taken place in relation to the still evolving right to a healthy environment at the international, regional, and national levels. In a landmark move taken by the General Assembly in 2022 where it recognized, in a historical resolution, that a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is a universal human right has the potential to bring real change in the patent development of a human right to a healthy environment. It has been observed how the environment is necessary for man’s survival and how the planet’s ecosystems and its natural systems are vital to mankind, therefore it follows that the environment ought to be protected as a human right , thus establishing a clear human right to a healthy environment. Deterioration of the environment is a pressing matter which affects among others human life, health, well-being, work, and education. A fully established and globally recognized right to a healthy environment is an essential prerequisite to the fulfilment of fundamental human rights embodied in international, as well as regional,

74 Ibid., pp. 89, and 534–537. 75 Ibid., pp. 534–537.

76 In 1854 Chief Seattle gave a stirring speech about the sanctity of the land and the need for careful stewardship of it. See in PICOLOTTI, Romina and TAILLANT, Jorge Daniel (eds.): Linking Human Rights and the Environment. Tucson, Arizona: The University of Arizona Press, 2010., p. xiii. See further ABRUZZI, William S.: The Myth of Chief Seattle. Human Ecology Review , Vol. 7, No. 1, 2000.

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