A/HRC/37/59 other private actors and natural causes; and take effective steps to ensure the conservation and sustainable use of the ecosystems and biological diversity on which the full enjoyment of human rights depends. While it may not always be possible to prevent all environmental harm that interferes with the full enjoyment of human rights, States should undertake due diligence to prevent such harm and reduce it to the extent possible, and provide for remedies for any remaining harm. 6. At the same time, States must fully comply with their obligations in respect of human rights, such as freedom of expression, that are exercised in relation to the environment. Such obligations not only have independent bases in human rights law; they are also required in order to respect, protect and fulfil the human rights whose enjoyment depends on a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Framework principle 3 States should prohibit discrimination and ensure equal and effective protection against discrimination in relation to the enjoyment of a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Commentary 7. The obligations of States to prohibit discrimination and to ensure equal and effective protection against discrimination4 apply to the equal enjoyment of human rights relating to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment. States therefore have obligations, among others, to protect against environmental harm that results from or contributes to discrimination, to provide for equal access to environmental benefits and to ensure that their actions relating to the environment do not themselves discriminate. 8. Discrimination may be direct, when someone is treated less favourably than another person in a similar situation for a reason related to a prohibited ground, or indirect, when facially neutral laws, policies or practices have a disproportionate impact on the exercise of human rights as distinguished by prohibited grounds of discrimination. 5 In the environmental context, direct discrimination may include, for example, failing to ensure that members of disfavoured groups have the same access as others to information about environmental matters, to participation in environmental decision-making, or to remedies for environmental harm (framework principles 7, 9 and 10). In the case of transboundary environmental harm, States should provide for equal access to information, participation and remedies without discriminating on the basis of nationality or domicile. 9. Indirect discrimination may arise, for example, when measures that adversely affect ecosystems, such as mining and logging concessions, have disproportionately severe effects on communities that rely on the ecosystems. Indirect discrimination can also include measures such as authorizing toxic and hazardous facilities in large numbers in communities that are predominantly composed of racial or other minorities, thereby disproportionately interfering with their rights, including their rights to life, health, food and water. Like directly discriminatory measures, such indirect differential treatment is 4 5 8 For example, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, arts. 2 (1) and 26; International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, art. 2 (2); International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, arts. 2 and 5; Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, art. 2; Convention on the Rights of the Child, art. 2; Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, art. 5. The term “discrimination” here refers to any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference which is based on any ground such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status, and which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by all persons, on an equal footing, of all rights and freedoms. Human Rights Committee, general comment No. 18 (1989) on non-discrimination, para. 7. See Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, general comment No. 20 (2009) on nondiscrimination in economic, social and cultural rights, para. 10.