[0:00]People are facing a threat we've never faced before. Environmental disasters. This program will show you how the law is adapting to keep the world itself safe by protecting our environment. Does nature have any legal rights? How can laws developed for humans be adapted to protect nature? We'll show how laws are increasingly being used to protect our environment.
[0:37]The environment is being threatened like never before. Human activity is changing the world around us, warming the air and sea. Extreme floods, droughts, and wildfires are increasingly common and affect all continents and oceans. Can the law help? Laws are basically an agreement between people. How can you have an agreement with something that's not a person? A tree, for example. We depend on the world around us. We need clean air, clean water, and clean Earth to live. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says everyone has the right to life and security. We can't have either life or security without a healthy environment. So that's where the law comes in. Environmental laws started really being developed in the middle of the last century. With more and more countries agreeing treaties, international agreements, there is greater willingness to engage in conversations about how to prevent environmental disasters. Rizwana Hassan, a climate lawyer from Bangladesh, explained some of the laws keeping the environment safe. There are UN-sponsored international laws to deal with issues like climate change, ozone layer depletion, protection of biological diversity, protection of international water courses, protection of endangered species, regulation on persistent organic pollutants. There are also laws that are made by regional organizations like the European Union targeting the European environment. Many laws come from global organizations, others from regional bodies like the European Union. They cover a huge range of areas. But what kind of laws are they and what power do they have? There are soft laws and there are hard laws. Soft laws are mere political commitments, they are not binding. Hard laws are binding, so if a state ratifies a hard law, and then does something that is against the letters and spirits of the law, then you can actually file a case against the state. There are two main types of law. Soft laws, which are more like political commitments or aims, and hard laws. You can be punished for breaking a hard law. Rizwana explained how environmental law features in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. in one article where it says that states have to endeavor to improve all aspects of industrial and environmental hygiene. We do have two covenants, one covenant deals with the civil and political rights, and the other covenant deals with the economic, social and cultural rights. They do not expressly talk about environmental rights, but protection of environment is linked to enjoyment of your civil, political, social and economic rights. Similarly, the enjoyment of your social, political, economic and cultural rights also depend on your enjoyment of environmental rights. So the big human rights laws don't actually say very much about the environment. But many of your rights depend on it. Without a safe environment, we couldn't enjoy our rights. Are there any laws that give us a safe environment? It was this year only that in March 2021, 69 countries have agreed to work together to ensure that there is an international law that will recognize people's right to healthy environment. The work is about to begin. The major obstacle the major obstacles remain lack of political commitment. Although there is an agreement to make a law to recognize your right to help the environment, the big problem is getting people to follow it. We saw how despite there not being much law directly about the environment, many of your rights depend on it. Is that enough to help in the real world? Climate change is harming people now. In 2018, more than 35,000 people were forced to flee their homes in the Mekong Delta every day. The Mekong River is the agricultural heartland of Vietnam and home to 20% of the country's population. But the Mekong River doesn't just flow through Vietnam. It starts in the Tibetan Plateau, also going through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia. So to prevent people in Vietnam fleeing their homes, we need an international agreement. Another river, another problem, and a fresh legal approach. The Ganges in India, viewed as holy by millions of people. But it's also very polluted. To protect it, the river was for 109 days, declared a legal person by a court in the state of Uttarakhand. It was given the same rights as a child. As it couldn't speak for itself, a board was appointed to speak for it. The government eventually said this couldn't go on, as the river went beyond the limits of Uttarakhand. So can the law protect the environment as well as the people who are affected by it? We spoke to Francesco Sindico, a law professor from the University of Strathclyde, who works on the climate change litigation initiative. And asked if there were laws directly protecting the environment. We have a lot of smaller laws, if you want, that protect specific aspects of the environment. For example, rivers, for example, wetlands, or biodiversity. But there's no such thing as one big law for every single country of the world that protects the whole environment. Now, having said that, if you think that climate change encapsulates everything, then the answer is slightly different. There is a law called the Paris Agreement that does try to deal with everything. There are lots of small laws that deal with specific things, and there is also the Paris Agreement on climate change, a major international agreement. But what does it actually do? So the Paris Agreement does something very tricky in a way. It tells the states that they can choose how to protect their environment and with by doing so climate change. Before the Paris Agreement, international law told countries, you have to do this. While now, with the Paris Agreement, international law is saying to the countries, tell me what you can do, and then we will all work together towards that goal. The Paris Agreement sets goals but allows countries to decide how to meet them.
[8:47]But with a specific problem, for example, flooding on the Mekong River, how could the law help? So if a neighboring country from Vietnam causes something that leads to a flood, which is significant, which creates a lot of damage, then Vietnam does have something in its weaponry if you want. It can sue. It can bring to court that other state. But if the if the question is, how do we prevent that from happening, then it's a much more difficult thing to answer. One country can sue another if they can prove they have caused something like damaging flooding. He also explained how giving a river legal rights might not be such a strange idea. So while in India it may not have worked, in other countries it has worked. So in Colombia, for example, a river has been given rights. But the reason it has worked is that in addition to giving rights to the river, a commission has been created, a guardians of the river. And it's this institution, this taking it forward that is proving successful in providing a better environment for the river and for the people who rely on the river. Other rivers have been protected this way. This was made more effective by also having a team of guardians to protect their rights. The law might not have much direct power to protect the environment, but our human rights are used to help keep it safe. We've also seen how the Paris Agreement encourages countries to take action. An example of laws keeping us and future generations safe.
