As of 2020, 156 of 193 (80%) countries, had recognized the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment through treaties, constitutions, and laws representing one type of policy to accelerate the transition to an economy that is resilient and advances forest, sustainable land use, biodiversity, and climate goals. The right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is an umbrella right that includes substantive rights to clean air, water, a safe and stable climate, sanitation, healthy and sanitary food, non-toxic environments, and healthy biodiversity and ecosystems. It also includes the procedural rights of access to information, public participation, and access to justice. In 2022, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution that recognized this human right and called on states to implement multilateral environmental agreements and take other steps, such as policy, capacity building, cooperation, and scaling of good practices, to implement it fully. Legal recognition is not the same as implementation, but it is an important first step. There is also a growing trend of climate litigation being brought on human rights grounds. Notably in 2023, a court in the US state of Montana ruled in favor of 16 youth plaintiffs that the state’s environmental law prohibiting the consideration of greenhouse gases in environmental reviews was a violation of the plaintiffs’ constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment.

As of 2020, 156 of 193 (80%) countries, had recognized the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment through treaties, constitutions, and laws representing one type of policy to accelerate the transition to an economy that is resilient and advances forest, sustainable land use, biodiversity, and climate goals. The right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is an umbrella right that includes substantive rights to clean air, water, a safe and stable climate, sanitation, healthy and sanitary food, non-toxic environments, and healthy biodiversity and ecosystems. It also includes the procedural rights of access to information, public participation, and access to justice. In 2022, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution that recognized this human right and called on states to implement multilateral environmental agreements and take other steps, such as policy, capacity building, cooperation, and scaling of good practices, to implement it fully. Legal recognition is not the same as implementation, but it is an important first step. There is also a growing trend of climate litigation being brought on human rights grounds. Notably in 2023, a court in the US state of Montana ruled in favor of 16 youth plaintiffs that the state’s environmental law prohibiting the consideration of greenhouse gases in environmental reviews was a violation of the plaintiffs’ constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment.