A/HRC/22/43 responsive policymaking. Human rights and environmental protection are inherently interdependent. 11. The recognition of the close relationship between human rights and the environment has principally taken two forms: (a) adoption of an explicit new right to an environment characterized in terms such as healthy, safe, satisfactory or sustainable; and (b) heightened attention to the relationship to the environment of already recognized rights, such as rights to life and health.4 A. A right to a healthy environment 12. As the importance of environmental protection has become clearer, many countries have added explicit environmental rights to their constitutions. In 1976, Portugal became the first country to adopt a constitutional “right to a healthy and ecologically balanced human environment”. Since then, more than 90 States have adopted similar rights in their national constitutions.5 About two thirds of the constitutional rights refer to health; alternative formulations include rights to a clean, safe, favourable or wholesome environment.6 Some States have included more detailed rights, such as rights to receive information and to participate in decision-making about environmental matters. 13. At the regional level, human rights agreements drafted after the 1970s have also included such rights. The 1981 African Charter on Human and Peoples‟ Rights provides that “all peoples shall have the right to a general satisfactory environment favorable to their development” (art. 24) and the 1988 Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights states that “everyone shall have the right to live in a healthy environment” (art. 11, para. 1). In 2003, the African Union adopted the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples‟ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, which states that women “shall have the right to live in a healthy and sustainable environment” (art. 18) and “the right to fully enjoy their right to sustainable development” (art. 19). The 2004 Arab Charter on Human Rights includes a right to a healthy environment as part of the right to an adequate standard of living that ensures well-being and a decent life (art. 38). Similarly, the Human Rights Declaration adopted by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in November 2012 incorporates a “right to a safe, clean and sustainable environment” as an element of the right to an adequate standard of living (para. 28 (f)). Although the European human rights system does not include an explicit right to a healthy environment, the 1998 Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (Aarhus Convention), drafted under the auspices of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, refers to “the right of every person of 4 5 6 A great deal of scholarship has addressed human rights and the environment. Good overviews are provided by the analytical study prepared by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), A/HRC/19/34 and Corr.1, which the Council noted with appreciation in Resolution 19/10, and a joint report prepared by OHCHR and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) for the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, entitled “Human Rights and the Environment: Rio+20”. A detailed survey of the entire field is Environmental Protection and Human Rights, by Donald K. Anton and Dinah L. Shelton (Cambridge University Press, 2011). See David Richard Boyd, The Environmental Rights Revolution: A Global Study of Constitutions, Human Rights, and the Environment (Vancouver, Toronto, UBC Press, 2012). For the remainder of this report, the phrase “right to a healthy environment” includes the various alternative formulations of such a right. 5