People are facing a threat we've never faced before:
environmental disasters.
This programme 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.
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 Hasan, 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 watercourses,
protection of endangered species,
regulation on persistent organic pollutants.
There are also laws that are made by regional organisations,
like the European Union targeting the European environment.
Many laws come from global organisations,
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 endeavour
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 recognise people's right to help the 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 recognise 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 is 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 doesn't set laws or tell countries what to do.
It set goals for climate change,
but allows countries to decide how to meet them.
But, with a specific problem –
for example, flooding on the Mekong River –
how could the law help?
So, if a neighbouring 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 ask.
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 of guardian 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.