On October 18, 2024, Counsellor Mrs. Marissa del Rosario Blackett addressed the United Nations General Assembly Third Committee on the topic of “the Human Right to a Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment.”
Opening the session, Ms. Astrid Puentes Riaño, Special Rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, presented her report, highlighting that while the importance of this right is increasingly recognised, humanity faces an unprecedented triple planetary crisis: climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. This crisis, she explained, is further complicated by rising inequality, humanitarian crises, escalating armed conflicts, and the irreversible breaching of planetary limits.
Ms. Puentes Riaño emphasised that despite ongoing global efforts to address these challenges, science indicates that the situation continues to worsen, making it urgent to both strengthen these efforts and transform humanity’s relationship with nature. She argued that respecting and enforcing the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment offers a unique opportunity for achieving this transformation. She outlined that fulfilling this right involves procedural elements—such as ensuring access to information, public participation, and justice—and substantive elements, including access to clean air, safe water, sustainable food, non-toxic environments, and healthy ecosystems.
The Special Rapporteur identified major obstacles to protecting this right, including an economic model that is unsustainable and disregards planetary limits and human rights, the weakening rule of law and environmental policies, restricted access to information, and increased risks for human rights defenders working to protect the climate and the environment. She stressed that marginalised groups, including women, children, indigenous communities, persons with disabilities, and migrants, face heightened vulnerabilities in this context.
To overcome these obstacles, Ms. Puentes Riaño urged Member States to embed human rights perspectives within multilateral agreements, explicitly including the right to a healthy environment, and to closely monitor its implementation. She advocated for urgent economic transformation, centering on human rights and environmental sustainability, and for economies that respect the interdependence of natural and human systems. Implementing existing legal frameworks, she argued, is also essential.
The Special Rapporteur further emphasised the importance of incorporating holistic and diverse perspectives, such as traditional and ancestral knowledge from indigenous peoples, communities of African descent, and women, to advance meaningful environmental protections. She called for stronger safeguards for those who defend the environment and climate, concluding that respecting and fulfilling the right to a sustainable environment can benefit everyone, particularly the most marginalised.
In her statement, Counsellor Blackett expressed concern over impending catastrophic consequences that will occur without adequately addressing the planet’s triple threat, particularly for vulnerable populations, including those in poverty and many women and girls. She stressed how environmental degradation displaces communities, especially indigenous and rural populations, deepening poverty cycles, disrupting education, and increasing susceptibility to forced labor, trafficking, and exploitation.
Counsellor Blackett drew attention to how the Sovereign Order of Malta, through Malteser International, works to protect ecosystems and support communities affected by environmental challenges. She cited Haiti, where the Order’s initiatives focus on preserving coastal mangrove forests, which are crucial for biodiversity, flood protection, and climate resilience, and highlighted how efforts include community education on sustainable resource management, and awareness campaigns on environmental links to health.
In conclusion, Counsellor Blackett called for a global response that addresses environmental degradation’s root causes, aiming to prevent poverty cycles and uphold the fundamental right to a clean, healthy environment.
