UN begins to establish the right to a healthy environment - and here’s a platform that can inform you on that, by your post-code

A very important new global rule began to be establihed this month. The UN recognised this Friday, for the first time, that having a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is a human right. From the UN site:

In resolution 48/13, the Council called on States around the world to work together, and with other partners, to implement this newly recognised right.

The text, proposed by Costa Rica, the Maldives, Morocco, Slovenia and Switzerland, was passed with 43 votes in favour and 4 abstentions - from Russia, India, China and Japan.

In a statement, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, called on Member States to take bold actions to give prompt and real effect to the right to a healthy environment.

Ms. Bachelet said that, having long called for such a step, she was “gratified” that the decision “clearly recognises environmental degradation and climate change as interconnected human rights crises.”

“Bold action is now required to ensure this resolution on the right to a healthy environment serves as a springboard to push for transformative economic, social and environmental policies that will protect people and nature,” she added.

At the beginning of the current session of the Human Rights Council, the High Commissioner described the triple planetary threats of climate change, pollution and nature loss as the single greatest human rights challenge of our era.

The new resolution acknowledges the damage inflicted by climate change and environmental destruction on millions of people across the world. It also underlines that the most vulnerable segments of the population are more acutely impacted.

The issue will now go to the UN General Assembly in New York, for further consideration.

More here. And a great aspiration. But how will it be effected? This platform below is a great example of from-below platform enterprise meeting a global call.

The Right to Know platform (see image at top of post) enables UK users to put in their postcodes, and be given an instant read out on the health impacts of their environmental indicators. An example of the read out from the writer’s current location is below:

Right To Know’s mission is:

To create mass awareness of how the places we live impact our health.

The more of us are aware of how our health is impacted by the places we live the faster we heal.