A/HRC/22/43 present and future generations to live in an environment adequate to his or her health and well-being” (art. 1).7 14. In contrast to these developments at the national and regional levels, no global agreement sets out an explicit right to a healthy (or satisfactory, safe or sustainable) environment.8 Were the Universal Declaration to be drafted today, it is easy to imagine that it would include a right recognized in so many national constitutions and regional agreements. At the same time, it must be acknowledged that the United Nations has not taken advantage of subsequent opportunities to recognize a human right to a healthy environment. The instrument that comes the closest may be the 1972 Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm Declaration), whose principle 1 states that: “man has the fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and wellbeing, and he bears a solemn responsibility to protect and improve the environment for present and future generations”. The 1987 report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (A/42/427), which brought forward the concept of sustainable development, included legal principles drafted by an experts group, the first of which declared, “all human beings have the fundamental right to an environment adequate for their health and well-being”.9 Rather than adopt this language, however, the 1992 Rio Declaration states: “Human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development. They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature” (principle 1). Nor have the later conferences on sustainable development in Johannesburg in 2002 and Rio de Janeiro in 2012 proclaimed a right to a healthy environment. 15. In the United Nations human rights bodies, the most sustained attention to the possible adoption of such a right came in the early 1990s. In 1990, the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities appointed Fatma Zohra Ksentini as its Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment. Her final report (E/CN.4/Sub.2/1994/9), in 1994, included draft principles on human rights and the environment drawn up by a group of experts, stating that everyone has “the right to a secure, healthy and ecologically sound environment” and listing a number of related rights, including rights to freedom from pollution, to protection and preservation of the air, soil, water, sea-ice, flora and fauna, to safe and healthy food and water, and to information concerning the environment (ibid., annex I). 16. Although the Human Rights Commission considered the report, it did not adopt or endorse the draft principles or appoint a Special Rapporteur itself. The Commission and Council, as well as other United Nations human rights bodies and mechanisms, have continued to study the interaction of human rights and the environment, but their attention has been directed primarily at the relationship of the environment with already recognized 7 8 9 6 It may also be noted that the European Committee of Social Rights has interpreted the right to protection of health in article 11 of the European Social Charter to include the right to a healthy environment. See complaint No. 30/2005, Marangopoulos Foundation for Human Rights v. Greece, decision on the merits (2006), para. 195. Articles 1 of the International Covenants on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and on Civil and Political Rights, on the right of self-determination, provide that “all peoples may, for their own ends, freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources” and “in no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence”. But this language speaks more to the relationship of a people with its natural resources than to a human right to a healthy environment. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child do refer to the environment in the context of specific rights, as the next section explains. In 1990, in its resolution 45/94, the General Assembly adopted a softened version of this language: “all individuals are entitled to live in an environment adequate for their health and well-being.”