Human Rights Day 2024/ EcoContact: Our rights mean right to healthy environment

Chisinau, Dec. 10 /MOLDPRES/- Human rights can empower individuals and communities to build a better future. By fully embracing and utilizing human rights as a solution to create the world we want, we can become a more peaceful, equal and sustainable society. This year's topic: Our Rights, Our Future, Now is a call to raise awareness of the importance and relevance of human rights in everyday life, including to a healthy environment.

A fundamental element for enjoyment of all human rights is the right to a healthy environment - indispensable for a sustainable economy and society. In this context, the EcoContact Association actively promotes this right, including through the Environmental Information Aarhus Center. Its main aim is to facilitate access to environmental information, to actively involve the public in the decision-making process and to ensure access to justice in matters of violations of the right to a clean environment.

The Aarhus Convention, ratified by the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova on April 7, 1999, guarantees public access to information, public participation in decision-making and access to justice in environmental matters. Both the Aarhus Convention and the other international agreements in the environmental protection, together with national legislation and, in particular, the Constitution of the Republic of Moldova, guarantee the right of every citizen to a healthy and non-prejudicial environment.

What does the right to a healthy environment include?

The human right to a healthy environment includes several interdependent specific rights: the right to living and living conditions in a healthy environment; the right to privacy; the right to clean air; the right to use natural resources; the right to water and sanitation; the right to access to information on the state of the environment; the right to participate in decision-making; the right to access to environmental justice.

"The right to a healthy environment implies good living conditions for human development: access to water, including drinking water, the existence of a sewage system, clean air that is not harmful to health, healthy green spaces free of picnic waste, rivers with clean water and no plastic, and proper waste disposal sites. Every citizen has the right of access to environmental information, and state authorities are obliged to present information on the state of the environment to the public. Every citizen has the right to participate in environmental decision-making, and the authorities are obliged to ensure public participation in the procedures for preparing and adopting environmental decisions. Every citizen has the right of access to environmental justice and the right to challenge environmental decisions of public authorities if they have been taken without respecting the right of access to environmental information and the right to participate in the decision-making process," explains EcoContact.

Promoting and respecting these principles will help protect the environment and ensure a sustainable balance in society. "It is time to change perceptions, to reflect on how human rights are the way to solutions, contributing to prevention, protection and transformation for the common good," EcoContact said.