Par: Kelly Matheson, Posté le: Apr 20 09

Regions: Global

Issues: Environment, Sustainable development, Water

Tags: air, climate change, corporations, environmental justice, environmental rights, human rights, land rights, mining, pollution

A human rights and environmental lawyer once remarked, "In this life, once you have opened your eyes you can never close them again."

My eyes were first opened by Professors John Bonine, Ibrahim Gassama, Svitlana Kravchenko and Mary Wood, from the University of Oregon School of Law.  Each one of them has served as a mentor and true hero for me.  While they are my heroes for different reasons, they have each helped me begin to understand a belief that forms the core of who I am.  They have started me down the path of dedicating my life to fighting for the protection of both environmental and human rights.

The connection was apparent to me and I felt it was obvious in my work to secure clean air, clean water, indigenous land rights, healthy landscapes and the right to environmental information for communities. But over the course of the last two decades I found it difficult to explain how I could be both an environmentalist and a human rights advocate.  It is now easy.  The first person to sum up the debate for me in one short but powerful gem of wisdom was a Peruvian lawyer who remarked, "Only in developed countries do people have the luxury of protecting trees for the sake for trees."  In the rest of the world, she said, "People must protect trees to protect people."

The stories I heard and filmed at this year's Public Interest Environmental Law Conference with my friend and colleague Priscila Néri gave me the words I was looking for.  And then there's the footage I have seen over the years from both cities and forests.  Footage of smoke stacks next to a schoolyard blanketing the sky with black smog, images of homelands being flooded because of multi-million dollar dams, stories of cyanide heap-leach mining for gold that puts toxic poisons directly into the water and land, and more.

So for anyone who may wonder if environment rights are human rights, I invite you to listen to these stories from Environment is Life: Voices of Human Rights Activists from Around the World:

For me, the insights shared by the human rights advocates in this film leave no room for debate - protecting the environment is about protecting life.  It's about having the basics.  It's about being healthy, having enough to eat, having clean water to drink and having reasonable shelter no matter where you live.

If you still wonder why I so profoundly believe that these disciplines - at times, treated as separate - are actually one, I ask that you take the time to listen to the full interviews that will be posted on the Hub in the days that follow.

And we want to hear from you too.  To share your thoughts on whether environmental rights are human rights, please join the conversation now!