The Rio Declaration of 1992 requires States to enact national legislations for environmental management and to ensure that citizens participate in this management through granting them access to information held by public authorities concerning the environment and by ensuring effective access to judicial and administrative proceedings including provision of redress and remedy.
Access to justice requires that government agencies and others respect, not only the other procedural rights of access to information and participation, but also that substantive environmental rights are protected so that citizens have an opportunity for seeking redress whenever there is failure to respect environmental rights.
In recent years, international environmental organisations have paid increasing attention to the judiciary and other legal stakeholders as focal points for the promotion of environmental law at national level. The Judiciary is a crucial partner in the development, interpretation, implementation and enforcement of environmental law. The laws that conserve, protect, and restore environmental resources must be implemented and their compliance assured.
The effective implementation of international treaties and other agreements require each country to have the capacity to develop the necessary policies, legislation and institutions, and to have access to trained staff and work in partnership with the civil society.
Environmental justice’s two basic premises are first that everyone should have the right and be able to live in a healthy environment, with access to enough environmental resources for a healthy life, and second, that it is predominantly the poorest and least powerful people who are missing these conditions. This is because global environmental problems (e.g. climate change), and lack of access to scarce environmental resources (e.g. energy and water), tend to affect the poorest and most vulnerable people hardest.
Efforts such as these, that support people and organisations to address underlying issues such as land rights, intellectual property rights, overexploitation of water resources, and sound environmental governance, are promoted by environment and development practitioners. However, the access to justice approach is not yet fully integrated in these efforts. For example, in the case of water services, the discrimination that women suffer in terms of land rights, inheritance, education rights, and access to employment and finance, are prime factors behind their unequal access to these services.
In Africa, the poor depend on their natural resources for their survival. They have to make difficult choices between conserving the environment and meeting their basic needs. Hunger and poverty often compel the poor to over-exploit and thus degrade the natural resource base on which their own livelihoods depend. This calls upon Governments to design new or strengthen existing environmental laws that protect the interests of the poor. Environmental justice needs to be promoted in Africa where socio-economically and ecologically disadvantaged people are most likely to be the first victims and the greatest sufferers of the impact of environmental degradation and global warming. Active, robust, informed participation by civil society is thus essential to environmental governance.
For environmental protection to be effective in African counties, civil society and governments must possess the technical and organisational capacity to address legal challenges for the benefit of their citizens.
Human Rights, Poverty and the Environment
In Africa, most people now accept that human health and survival is threatened by ecological problems like air pollution, deforestation, water shortage and climate change. In this sense a clean and healthy environment is essential for the effective protection of human rights in the continent. The poor is the most vulnerable to environmental degradation and most disadvantaged in regards to access to clean, affordable and sustainable development services.
Environmental inequalities exist not only among world nations, but within them as well. In rich countries and poor countries alike, certain populations often bear disproportionate burdens from the effects of environmental degradation. In Africa, children are especially prone to environmental risks because of poor sanitary conditions. A recent World Health Organization survey reported that ‘two-thirds of the preventable diseases occurring worldwide from environmental causes occur among children’.
International development agencies argue that there is a need to recognise and improve understanding of the dimension of the poverty-environment nexus, in order to achieve poverty reduction goals by 2015. According to the World Bank, when poor countries are impoverished due to corruption and bad governance; their people suffer, they need more aid, they exploit available natural resources to survive until there are depleted, they create refugees, they engage in conflicts and they withdraw from world markets.
Environmental development rights contribute directly to MDG-7 on ensuring environmental sustainability. In addition to MDG-7, the environment plays a cross-cutting role in several MDGs. According to environmental experts, environmental sustainability is the foundation on which strategies for achieving all other MDGs must be built, and not only causally link environmental degradation to poverty, hunger, and gender inequality and health conditions. Other examples of synergies can be found in the links between the right to clean drinking water and MDG 4 on reducing child mortality.
Environmental justice in Africa is all about integrating rights into environmental services and resources and environmental programming to help to make interventions more focused on poor people. Working to integrate rights into sustainable development help to make interventions more focused on poor people, and thus contribute directly to the first MDG on eradicating extreme poverty and the links between rights to clean drinking water and MDG-4 on reducing child mortality.
Environmental organisations, decision-makers, local lawyers, and scholars need to understand the laws and, more importantly, how they can use them to advocate for environmental protection and the health and well-being of the country’s people. Local grassroots organisations that protect, represent and involve the interests of poorer residents play a vital role in empowering the poor to claim their rights. Social mobilisation and active support for partnerships with local environment and other civil society groups, has been found to be a useful strategy for building the capacity of right-holders to claim their rights and hold SD and environment authorities accountable.
Africa Network for Environmental Rights (ANER)’ Human Rights based approach
The 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro formulated the link between human rights and environmental protection largely in procedural terms. Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration states as follows: “Environmental issues are best handled with the participation of all concerned citizens, at the relevant level. At the national level, each individual shall have appropriate access to information concerning the environment that is held by public authorities, including information on hazardous materials and activities in their communities, and the opportunity to participate in decision-making processes. States shall facilitate and encourage public awareness and participation by making information widely available. Effective access to judicial and administrative proceedings, including redress and remedy, shall be provided.”
ANER is human-rights based because human rights and sustainable development are mutually reinforcing. Access to environmental services and resources; and environmental protection are essential to the realisation of basic human rights, including the rights to food, health and even life itself. So too, a human rights framework that ensures transparency and accountability and that empowers citizens to contribute to the management of natural resources, helps to achieve environment goals.
A human rights-based approach places people at the centre of development because it is based on the perceptions, needs, and legitimate claims of people. This leads to the design and implementation of programmes that are more likely to have direct benefits for poverty reduction, education, health, and gender equality.
Integrating these principles into programming requires a specific effort to identify the individuals and groups most marginalised and vulnerable in regards to access to environmental services and resources; such as women, children, minorities, indigenous groups, migrants, elderly, persons living with disabilities and persons living with HIV/AIDS.
At a national level, asserting procedural rights, such as the right to information, the right to participation and the right to judicial redress, has provided communities and NGOs with an important tool for ensuring sound environmental governance. These rights are well established in international and national legal instruments. In countries that lack comprehensive environmental laws and resources to implement and enforce those laws, particularly in Africa, they play an essential role in protecting individuals from environmental damage. They also enable those concerned groups to voice their objections to environment damage and hold governments to account. Wider legal and political issues, such as discriminatory laws, lack of land rights, and corrupt and ineffective institutions, may be the major cause for why the poor and the vulnerable are unable to exercise and enjoy their environmental services and resources and environment related rights.
Poverty: A Cause and Effect of Environmental Degradation
Poverty is linked to the environment in complex ways, particularly in natural resource-based African economies. About two-thirds of the population live in rural areas, deriving their main income from agriculture. Land degradation, deforestation, lack of access to safe water, and loss of biodiversity, compounded by climatic variability, are the concerns that invariably arise from assessments of their natural environment.
Degradation of resources reduces the productivity of the poor who most rely on them, and makes poor people even more susceptible to extreme events (weather, economic, and civil strife). Poverty makes recovery from these events extremely difficult and contributes to lowering social and ecological resistance. The poor, with shorter time-horizons, and usually less secure access to natural resources, are unable, and often unwilling to invest in natural resource management. Moreover, poor people are often the most exposed to environmental damage since they cannot purchase safe water or have the option of living in a less polluted area (The World Bank, 1997).
In fact, poverty and environmental protection are closely linked, as the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), Africa’s development blueprint, makes clear. NEPAD’s environmental action plan states, “Africa is characterized by two interrelated features: rising poverty levels and deepening environmental degradation ... poverty remains the main cause and consequence of environmental degradation and resource depletion in Africa. Without significant improvement in the living conditions and livelihoods of the poor, environmental policies and programmes will achieve little success.”
The impacts of climate change on the next generation are now inevitable. However, there is a lot that can and must be done to help developing countries to adapt and to protect the most vulnerable. With climate change, by 2080, an extra 600 million people worldwide could be affected by malnutrition. An additional 400 million people could be exposed to malaria. And an additional 1.8 billion people could be living without enough water. By 2050, 200 million people could be rendered homeless by rising sea levels, floods and drought. The continent of Africa stands to suffer the most from climate change whilst having contributed the least to the problem. The region is already experiencing significant impacts from climate change including increasing desertification.
Women and the Environment
In Africa, a woman’s role in the management of natural resources assumes a multidimensional nature. Unfortunately, the central and crucial role that women play is often both overlooked and unappreciated. Women are the ones who spend hours collecting firewood, water and other natural resources. There is a great need for women to have independent rights/access to land and other natural resources. They seek to manage the environment, although their struggle for survival often results in environmental damage from activities such as fuel-wood collection
Although women make tremendous contributions to the economy, women's contributions are not valued in the same way as men's. Much of women's work is not underpaid, it is entirely unpaid. Among the majority of African rural and low-income urban dwellers, women perform all domestic tasks, while many also farm and trade. They are responsible for the care of children, the sick and the elderly, working for or producing food, in addition to performing essential social functions within their communities.
The negative outcomes of the loss and/or degradation of natural resources often fall most heavily on women, adding to their responsibilities and multiple roles in families and communities. Women usually have no rights and/or access to land for varying legal and cultural reasons yet they are the majority of the world's agricultural producers, playing important roles in farming, fisheries, forestry and farming. They are the least titleholders among the property holders in the world. African women, particularly those in rural areas, are the main custodians of indigenous knowledge in natural resource conservation, management and food preparation. In spite of efforts to link African women to activities that promote sustainable development, these women have continued to face problems in almost all sectoral development activities dealing with natural resources management. Development interventions to alleviate poverty should emphasise the critical role played by African women in the conservation and management of natural resources by initiating and strengthening policies and support that minimise gender inequalities.
Civil wars in Africa affect women who endure the most of increased morbidity and mortality over time. Conflicts affect different aspects of female health. Women often endure the most of war, poverty and disease in sub-Saharan Africa. Whether it is brutal rapes in Darfur and eastern Congo or the toll taken by HIV/AIDS, women often receive little help dealing with the consequences. The raping of women and young girls has become practically a war strategy in Africa's conflicts. In some countries, women are also increasingly becoming heads of households partly due the loss of their partners to conflicts. This means that they are solely responsible for providing for their families and take part in farming activities yet they do not have the legal rights to own land and other natural resources (which are the main source of livelihood.
Since many women do not own land, women and girls constantly face the threat of becoming economically unstable and dependant on their male relatives or husbands. In the eventuality of economic despair, they may turn to means such as prostitution or transactional sex, or bowing to certain cultural practices such as wife inheritance that may expose them to sexually transmitted diseases and other health risks. During times of war and conflict, sanitation facilities in refugee camps are generally poor and women rely on foreign aid to cater for their needs. Women are the worst hit by shortages of water and poor sanitation because they have to travel longer distances to search for water under very insecure conditions.
Water and poor sanitation
According to the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the proportion of urban dwellers with access to safe drinking water in sub-Saharan Africa has only declined slightly over the last 20 years, from 86 percent in 1990 to 83 percent to date. Additionally, low-income urban dwellers have to pay disproportionately high prices for water sometimes up to 50 times the price paid by higher income groups. This problem has been worsened by a high rate of urbanisation resulting in highly density slums with poor environmental conditions. Africa has been experiencing the world’s most rapid rate of urbanisation at nearly 5 per cent per annum. The most severe problems with access to safe drinking water are in high-density slums, where the risk of contamination from unsafe water and poor sanitation is highest.
Africa remains one of the world's regions endowed with abundant water resources that, sadly, are not efficiently utilised. With 17 large rivers and more than 160 lakes, the continent only uses about 4 percent of its total annual renewable water resources for agricultural industry and domestic purposes. Currently, about 50 percent of urban water is wasted, as is 75 percent of irrigation water. An adequate supply of clean water, appropriate sanitation and good hygiene are the most important preconditions for sustaining human life, for maintaining ecological systems that support all life and for achieving sustainable development. The seventh of the eight Millennium Development Goals calls for governments to cut by half the percentage of their population living without safe water and basic sanitation. Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region that looks set to miss both of these targets unless a concerted effort is made.
Poor sanitation leads to poor health. More than 700,000 African children die every year from diarrhoea. Diarrhoea can also lead to chronic malnutrition. Millions of children who survive suffer from chronic malnutrition, which is responsible for over half of all child deaths on the continent. Sickness forces children to miss school and can damage their ability to learn. It has been shown that providing schools with basic sanitation, including separate toilets for boys and girls, improves attendance and encourages more girls to enrol. In rural Africa, 19 per cent of women spend more than one hour on each trip to fetch water, an exhausting and often dangerous chore that robs them of the chance to work and learn. Women without toilets are forced to defecate in the open, risking their dignity and personal safety.
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