A/HRC/34/49 A. Human rights and ecosystem services 6. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a comprehensive review of the relationship between ecosystems and human well-being, states: “Everyone in the world depends completely on Earth’s ecosystems and the services they provide, such as food, water, disease management, climate regulation, spiritual fulfilment, and aesthetic enjoyment.” 2 Ecosystem services include provisioning services such as food, water, timber and fiber, which are necessary for basic material needs, including nutrition, shelter and clothing. Regulating services such as purification of water and protection against erosion support clean water and human health. Ecosystems also provide vital cultural services to the many people around the world whose religious and spiritual values are rooted in nature. 3 7. International law recognizes that everyone has human rights to what the Assessment describes as the components of human well-being. The relationship between ecosystems and human rights is mediated by social institutions, culture and technology in countless ways. But it is obvious that without the services provided by healthy ecosystems, the ability to enjoy many rights, including the rights to life, health, food, water and participation in cultural life, would be severely compromised or impossible. As the Special Rapporteur has described in previous reports (A/HRC/22/43 and A/HRC/25/53), the Human Rights Council and other human rights bodies have recognized that the full enjoyment of human rights depends on a healthy, sustainable environment. Although they have not typically used the phrase “ecosystem services”, such services are what a healthy environment provides. 8. Human rights law does not require that ecosystems remain untouched by human hands. Economic and social development depends on the use of ecosystems, including, in appropriate cases, the conversion of natural ecosystems such as old-growth forests into human-managed ecosystems such as pastures and cropland. To support the continued enjoyment of human rights, however, this development cannot overexploit natural ecosystems and destroy the services on which we depend. Development must be sustainable, and sustainable development requires healthy ecosystems. In Sustainable Development Goal 15, States committed to “protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss” (General Assembly resolution 70/1).4 B. Human rights and biodiversity 9. Although the importance of a healthy environment for the enjoyment of human rights is widely recognized, the relationship between human rights and biodiversity remains less well understood. The Convention on Biological Diversity (art. 2) defines biodiversity as “the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems”. Biodiversity 2 3 4 4 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Synthesis (Island Press, Washington, D.C., 2005), p. 1. The report defines the term “ecosystem” as “a dynamic complex of plant, animal, and microorganism communities and the nonliving environment interacting as a functional unit”. Ibid., p. v. A fourth category, supporting services, which includes soil formation, photosynthesis and nutrient cycling, underlies the other three types of ecosystem services. See Ecosystems and Human Wellbeing: Synthesis, p. 40. Targets under Goals 2, 6 and 14 address the protection of agricultural, water-related, and marine and coastal ecosystems.