Consultation Works to Evolve Integrated Human Rights - Environmental Action Strategy
Turning T.S. Eliot's observation that "April is the cruelest month" on its head, the Boston Research Center, the Center for Respect of Life and Environment, and Global Education Associates convened a day-long consultation, Practical Steps to Realize Environmental Justice: Drawing on 50 Years of Human Rights Developments this past April in Cambridge.
Ethicists involved in developing the Benchmark Draft of the Earth Charter came. Environmental lawyers working on the Draft International Covenant on Environment and Development came. Scholars and activists engaged in the worldwide struggle to enforce human rights came.
The strategy session commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and proposed to articulate for the Earth Charter Commission and the IUCN (World Conservation Union), the international groups responsible for the Charter and the Covenant, a coordinated strategy to advance these two international documents. The inseparability of environmental justice and human rights was a guiding principle for the discussions.
As Rick Clugston, Executive Director of the Center for Respect of Life and Environment, observed of the day's endeavor: "It's worth reflecting on what huge tasks both promoting the Earth Charter and the Covenant have been and will continue to be. The aim is to completely shift the core paradigm of human ethical relations to the natural world and to get people from different professions, different religions, governments, and NGOs all to agree on a common universal set of principles and then to translate those principles into actual hard law."
Stressing the interrelatedness of the key documents under discussion, Steven Rockefeller, Professor of Religion at Middlebury College and co-convener with Professor Nicholas Robinson, expressed the view that "The Earth Charter can help build a foundation of support for the Covenant, and the Covenant is critical in translating into hard law and implementing the values we're trying to articulate in the Charter."
"We've never really done a systematic human rights analysis of the Earth Charter," Dr. Rockefeller admitted, "and I want to do a lot of listening today. The Preamble," he continued, "at present doesn't mention human rights. Principle 1 lays a foundation for the whole Charter. It does not explicitly mention human rights but it implies respect for the dignity of persons and human rights, and it identifies the attitude that underlies commitment to human rights. But I also want to point out that the Charter is concerned with respect for Earth, all species, and individual creatures as well as for human beings."
"While the Charter," Dr. Rockefeller elaborated, "puts much emphasis on the rights of people and the responsibilities that people have to people, it is also concerned with the responsibilities people have to Earth, other species, and individual creatures for their own sake. The Charter isn't just a human rights document. That's important to remember as we proceed."
The first principle that mentions human rights is number 3, the principle on sustainable living. Speaking of this principle which Bella Abzug helped construct during the Rio+5 Forum in March, 1997, the coordinator of the Earth Charter drafting process highlighted the fact that, in the Charter, "Respect for human rights is made part of the definition of sustainable development. Sustainable living is the term we use here as a mode of living that benefits people and ecosystems. This is a distinctive contribution of the Benchmark Draft."
In addition, he elaborated, "There is the general call for justice with a specific reference to environmental justice--environmental justice being the right people have to an environment that is adequate for their dignity and well being. Let me make it clear," he underscored, "that when I use the term environmental justice, I am thinking about it as a human rights issue that has to do with the rights of people regarding the environment in which they live." Professor Rockefeller went on to note that the use of rights language with reference to nature is very controversial, dividing people on the Earth Charter Commission.
"No attempt has been made," the consultation co-convener went on, "to structure the Charter so that all principles dealing with human rights are clustered. This is a deliberate strategy. The idea is that human rights is one part of the larger tapestry, that issues of peace, of social justice, of economic development and environmental protection are all interdependent, and the Charter needs to weave them together."
The Benchmark Draft is being crafted first and foremost as a people's treaty to be adopted by civil society. The Earth Charter Commission has decided not to issue Benchmark Draft II until February 1999 to provide adequate discussion and revision opportunity.
"One criticism of the Benchmark Draft is that it does not explicitly state that it is necessary to secure the basic rights and freedoms of a people before one can call upon them to fulfill a complex set of social and ecological responsibilities." Perhaps, Dr. Rockefeller wondered aloud, it needs to be stated clearly in the Preamble.
An open question is whether a paragraph on human rights should include a reference to the basic moral principle of the golden rule (which does not apply to non-human species the way it applies to people). And what about the principle that each of us as individuals, each group and every nation, has responsibility for all peoples in the larger community of life: Should this principle of universal responsibility be number one or number two in the Charter? Should there be a separate statement about future generations? What about the goal of the pursuit of lifelong learning and participation in decision making?
Introducing proposed draft language for Benchmark II, in which the principles are layered into three parts plus a preamble, the Charter's spokesman suggested, "You could have a short Charter of three principles, a short Charter of nine principles, or you could have a longer Charter with 21 principles for the 21st century to address the interests of a lot of groups."
Dr. Rockefeller applied the metaphor of a tree of life to the new Charter language: "The Preamble is the soil, Part One the roots, Part Two the trunk, and Part Three the branches." People are being invited to add figurative branches, twigs, and leaves as they address issues of concern to them.
Nicholas Robinson, Professor of Law at Pace University School of Law, conceded that "Many friends who have labored mightily in the human rights area sincerely think that the addition of an environmental component to human rights is diluting human rights and diverting resources."
The Covenant was introduced at the 50th anniversary of the United Nations in the General Assembly's public conference on international law. "Since that time," the co-convener continued, "we have been preparing analyses of all of the critiques and commentaries that have come and have tried to pull together a common understanding of how the debate on earth principles should be reflected in the Covenant."
Speaking of the Charter, he continued: "The environmental principles and ethical values that are in the Earth Charter have to be nailed to a rule of law to which our society feels bound."
Noel Brown, Environmental Diplomat and Chairman of Friends of the United Nations and moderator of the open discussion, observed that "We are at the point of convergence--one objective, two approaches. Increasingly we are narrowing the differences. For the first time we may genuinely have a people's charter. The Covenant and the Charter are really trying to define both the procedures and the content through which we can acknowledge our responsibilities as trustees for the earth."
"We in Asia," Clarence Dias, President of the International Center for Law in Development, continued, "look at human rights in many senses. Human rights are needed in order to ensure that most precious of all rights, the right to be and remain human. If we think of human rights in that sense, we are coming very close to the concept of stewardship which really enshrines environmental thinking."
"The human right to development," Clarence Dias underscored, "is not about having more but about being more. In human rights," he concluded, "there were charter-based human rights mechanisms and treaty-based mechanisms--something I think that environmental activism should strive for."
In his commentary on the morning's presentations, Stephen Kass, a partner in the law firm of Carter, Ledyard & Milburn and director of the firm's Environmental Practice Group, asserted, "The environment is never going to be preserved if there are tremendous disparities in wealth. We will never be able to deal with human rights very effectively unless we address some of the issues of sustainable development. I don't think we can begin to address any of these issues unless we address them all."
Environmental lawyer Johannah Bernstein posited that "Somehow we need to start measuring the bottom line in a very different way. We need to use full-cost accounting to recognize that in corporate practices we have to look at the full range of transaction costs."
In his plenary presentation, Dr. Ruud Lubbers, former Prime Minister of the Netherlands and Professor of Globalization at Tilburg University, began by speaking of a new concept of governance. "Globalization," he explained, "leading to a more borderless world has some fundamental consequences. One of the consequences is a weakening of the nation-state in its role of safeguarding the quality of life."
"My reading is that we are beginning a new renaissance, a new form of civil society. People are stressing their own identity and their own roles. They want decisions to be made near home. And so we have begun to put pressure not only on governments but also on companies. Companies are responding by creating mission statements that internalize societal values."
"This is really a new phase in history," Dr. Lubbers speculated, "the first phase where we really experience history as world history. There is in this process much about spirituality. Spirituality is the mystery to have been created and to be entrusted with creation."
Focusing on the issue of the sovereignty of peoples, Stephen Marks, Director of the United Nations Studies Program at the School of International and Public Affairs of Columbia University, warned, "I want to simply alert us all to one of the dangers of relying on people's organizations to take charge. The corporate community will organize and, when it counts, will occupy leadership roles in civil society movements. Behind them will be the profit sector whose aims and purposes are not so much the betterment of the human community but the betterment of profits."
"One of the practices that has proven successful in the 50 years of human rights experience has been the movement from study to declaration to binding instrument. Therefore, I think the principal task ahead is to articulate the draft Charter and the Covenant in ways so that they mesh, that allow one to build upon the other."
President of Global Education Associates Patricia Mische moved to extend the boundaries of the discussion: "I would like to add to this discussion the question of the sovereignty of the earth. The sovereignty of the earth does not recognize national sovereignty. It really has to do with a whole paradigm, an ecological paradigm, for looking at interrelations, interdependencies, the indivisibility of the sovereignty of the earth."
Neil Popovic added his observation that "In terms of transnational corporations and their role in civil society, the point is not whether or not they get to participate. They will participate. What the human rights picture can add here is to give a boost to those who don't have an equal voice or means to get to Rio or Geneva or wherever else it may be that the discussion and standard-setting and formulation of legal norms is going on."
At day's end, Steven Rockefeller summed up the responses of the Earth Charter discussion group. There was agreement that human rights should be mentioned in the Preamble and that there should be explicit mention of the reciprocal relationship between environmental protection and the realization of human rights. Further, the group was emphatic in expressing the view that economic development is a means, not an end. The end is human well being and improving the quality of life.
"We have to build public support for whatever we do if we expect to have success," Stephen Mills reminded his colleagues, a concern that was also articulated by Johannah Bernstein when she asked, "What then is a strategy for elevating the Earth Charter to the same level as the International Declaration of Human Rights?"
In noting remaining language difficulties, Bernstein observed that "Sustainable development is still perceived as a very vague, ambiguous concept and it is still seen as subordinate to what is perceived as the primary policy goal of economic growth, competitiveness, and job creation."
Other difficulties with which the small discussion group struggled included the issue of social justice and what kind of language to use to address racial and other group discrimination; the need to qualify the term "education" to make it more inclusive; and how exactly to refer to disarmament and the elimination of weapons of mass destruction.
In the small group discussion of the Covenant, Winston Langley, Professor of International Relations and Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, suggested that "both the social and the international order are at least in part derived from an ecological order. If we want to make this document as foundational as I think it ought to be, there should be something in it that would indicate that every human being is entitled to an ecological order that makes it possible for the realization of all the human rights we may want to think of."
"The environment," Stephen Kass added, "should not be permitted to be used as an instrument of war. Also, one should not seek to manipulate the environment to deprive other people of their sustenance."
There was concurrence on the need to create a document which includes the governance of transnational corporations within its boundaries. As Katie Redford, co-founder and Director of EarthRights International, put it: "Transnationals are really supplanting governments in many ways in terms of who's really controlling the world order."
Stephen Marks suggested some specific strategies for the implementation of environmental rights:
- Compile texts of applicable legislation with commentaries and examples designed for judges.
- Train judges, potential litigators, and NGOs.
- Develop a litigation strategy for NGOs, and design that strategy to achieve a longer-term purpose.
As the day's proceedings were nearing their end, Mary Evelyn Tucker, Associate Professor of Religion at Bucknell University, spoke of the dimension of moral suasion and suggested "We need to feel that sense of hope and potential that these charters really will have some effectiveness."
The Boston Research Center for the 21st Century, which last year published two Earth Charter reports, plans to publish a summary of the day's recommendations to submit to the Earth Charter Commission and the IUCN.
Practical Steps to Realize Environmental Justice:
Drawing on 50 Years of Human Rights Developments
April 20, 1998
- Johanna Bernstein , The Earth Council
- Elise Boulding , Dartmouth College, retired
- Noel Brown , Friends of the United Nations
- Richard Clugston , Center for Respect of Life and Environment
- Clarence Dias , International Center for Law in Development
- Robert Goldstein , Pace University School of Law
- John Grim , Bucknell University
- Stephen Kass , Carter, Ledyard & Milburn
- Winston Langley , University of Massachusetts, Boston
- Rudolphus (Ruud) Lubbers , Tilburg University
- Stephen Marks , Columbia University
- Stephen Mills , Sierra Club
- Patricia Mische , Global Education Associates
- Neil Popovic , Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe
- Katherine Redford , EarthRights International
- Nicholas Robinson , Pace University School of Law
- Steven Rockefeller , Middlebury College
- Sage Russell , American Association for the Advancement of Science
- Mary Evelyn Tucker , Bucknell University
- Soon-Young Yoon , Earth Times
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