Knox: Southeast Asian nations on path toward environmental justice

Implementing the Right to a Safe, Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment will be a crucial test

Faculty Affiliate John Knox has published a commentary in Mongabay on the Declaration on the Right to a Safe, Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment, adopted by the eleven member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in October.

Knox, the Henry C. Lauerman Professor of International Law at Wake Forest University, served as the first UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment from 2012 to 2018. In his commentary, he reflects upon the global progress toward the right to a healthy environment that has been made over the past 14 years, as well as the challenges of implementation that await the Declaration.

Breaking New Ground

According to Knox, the ASEAN Declaration is notable for the extent to which it reflects the input of Indigenous peoples and environmental defenders, as well as its articulation of more specific standards for environmental human rights, including the people’s right to information, meaningful public participation, and access to justice.

The ASEAN region faces enormous environmental challenges, and too often governments have failed to protect the human rights of those who are on the frontlines of those challenges.

While the Declaration itself is welcomed as a “historic step” in the region, Knox notes that implementation of the rights it enumerates is even more crucial, and potentially more challenging.

Read on to learn more about what that implementation might look like and the precedent it may set for other regions moving forward.

Cover Image: Aerial drone photo of Shimizu Island in the Philippines (Igor Tichonow, Adobe Stock).