New National and International Processes of Human Dimensions of the Environmental Rights

Abstract

Due to activities such as illegal deforestation, production of chemicals and plastics, exploitation of fossil fuels, and other large-scale extractive activities, businesses operating in the global economy routinely compromise human rights to have a healthy, clean, and sustainable environment. This human right was recognized by the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2021 and it includes fundamental rights related to clean air, safe climate, access to safe water and adequate sanitation, healthy and sustainable food production, informal environments for living and working, studying and playing, and biodiversity and a healthy ecosystem. By jeopardizing this human right related to nature, life, health, livelihood, and sustainable development, business activists threaten the life prospects of billions of people. The most vulnerable beneficiaries affected by commercial activities such as children, women, indigenous peoples, local communities, farmers, people with disabilities, and especially those whose identity exists in multiple vulnerable groups usually face the most difficult barriers, including financial, language, information barriers, social labeling associated with human rights violations, lack of access to legal representation, and corruption of law enforcement officials, to adopt effective solutions. When victims in countries with limited law enforcement and economic capacity face corruption and other weaknesses in the rule of law, and when justice must be served through transnational legal actions that are beyond the capacity of most human rights victims, solutions effectively are particularly elusive.