In the wrong direction
John Knox, UN rapporteur on human rights and the environment, says the loosening of environmental regulations underway in Brazil could cause setbacks
In the wake of strong and alarming offensives by Brazilian agribusiness to loosen environmental legislation and as the country leads the ranking of environmental activist killings, the UN special rapporteur on the environment and human rights, John Knox, was in Brazil for an unofficial visit during which he participated in conferences at the University of São Paulo (USP) and in the Federal Senate.
On Friday, May 19, the UN rapporteur participated in the seminar “Environment and rights of traditional peoples: effects of relaxing environmental laws”, organized by Conectas, ISA (Socioambiental Institute) and SGA/USP (Environmental Management Superintendency of the University of São Paulo). Click here to watch the event in full.
According to Knox, the efforts being made in Brazil to restrict the rights of indigenous peoples, postpone land demarcation and facilitate the approval of environmental licenses are steps in the wrong direction. The rapporteur also expressed grave concern over impunity in the large number of killings of environmental activists in the country.
See below the interview conducted by Conectas with the rapporteur on his mandate in the UN and on the direction of Brazil on the subject of environmental and human rights protection:
Conectas | What are the key issues that you’ve been focusing on? For the future reports, what will be the key issues?
John Knox | I was the first person appointed on human rights and the environment and so for my first 3 year term the Human Rights Council asked me to focus on clarifying this relationship and the obligations that States have to protect the environment in order to protect human rights. In 2015 the council renewed my mandate for another 3 years, and changed my title from independent expert to special rapporteur, and this signified that the council now believes that the norms, the obligations are clear enough. And so I’ve identified good practices, I go on country missions, I receive communications. On my last year I’m going to issue guiding principles on human rights and the environment. We’ve tried to summarise these obligations and work I’ve done over the last 6 years, in ways to make it easy for people to understand exactly what the human rights obligations are.
We have seen some specific cases that demonstrate very clearly the close relationship between human rights and the environment, for instance the disaster of the dam collapse in Mariana in Brazil in 2015. So, what is the current recognition, specially of human rights bodies, of this relationship between human rights and the environment? How environmental spaces of negotiation, like COP, are also incorporating human rights concerns into the frameworks?
JK | So, just in the 5 years I’ve been working in this mandate, I’ve seen an enormous increase in the awareness of the relationship between human rights and the environment, of both the human rights community and the environmental community. The inter-american system, for example, has issued a large number of opinions on the rights of indigenous peoples in relation to environmental harm. Many other tribunals have created similar jurisprudence, and in fact that’s what I draw on when I describe the obligations that States have under human rights law with the perspective of the environment. On the environmental side I think there’s increasing awareness as well. Often however these discussions on the environmental context do not use the term “human rights”, in other words they may talk about rights to information or participation, but they are not always aware that there’s body of human rights jurisprudence there, while that’s relevant. So part of what I’ve tried to do in my work is strengthen these kinds of relationships and strengthen this understanding on both sides.
What do you expect from Brazil, a country that has shown this historical leadership in the negotiations of environmental treaties and declarations — we hosted the Rio Conference, the Rio 20 –, in terms of international and domestic attitude?
JK | What every country does affects not only its own people, because in the environmental context we all depend on global environment. Some countries can affect the other countries more than others, and Brazil plays a particularly import role in the protection of the environment, because of its extreme high degree of biological diversity, because of its forest and because of these others ecosystems. I think it’s very important for Brazil to not go backwards with the perspective of the protection of the environment. One of the fundamental principles of human rights law generally is non-retrogression. When you have achieved a certain level of protection of human rights while if you’re depending on your development status, it may be difficult to move forward at an increasingly fast rate, but you should always resist very strongly efforts to go backwards. And I think efforts to restrict the rights of indigenous peoples, to slow down the demarcation of their territories, to make it easier to get environmental licences for agriculture and other development projects, all these things would be steps on the wrong direction.
Developing countries always argue that safeguards delay the projects or increase the cost of the project. Have you ever explored concrete ways to try reconciling this desire to make faster disbursements with protection?
JK | Well I think it’s very important to distinguish between safeguards and conditionality. I think it’s one thing for a lender to say “we’re only going to give you money for this project if you make other changes in your domestic system that really have nothing to do with this project in particular”. That I think of as conditionality and I completely understand why developing countries dislike that and oppose it. I don’t think that’s an accurate way of thinking however of a safeguard that says “before you go ahead with this project you need to make sure that you’ve done an environmental impact assessment of the project’s effects on the human rights of people that are most affected”. That’s simply making sure the project itself is not violating human rights norms and is perfectly appropriate for everyone involved. Often the people who are arguing these kinds of safeguards slow down projects are ignoring the fact that these safeguards will make the projects more robust, more sustainable, it will avoid backlash from the people who live closest to the project, but it will also make sure that the project itself makes environmental and economic sense. Yes it may take a little bit longer to go through the procedure, but at the end of the day you can be much more certain that the project actually is sustainable and that you won’t have problems with them later.
Latin America is the most dangerous place in the world for environmental defenders, unfortunately Brazil is number one. What can be done by all the actors involved (government, business and civil society) to reverse this scenarium?
JK | I think in countries, unfortunately like Brazil, that have high numbers of deaths of environmentalists and human rights defenders, a major factor is if people think that they can commit these crimes without being punished for them. So I think perhaps the single most important thing that governments have to do is respond quickly to death threats, violence and other kinds of warning signs. And if a killing does occur governments have to arrest the people involved. Very often the murderers are acting in the behalf of someone else, and government has to go up the chain to arrest and trial these people. For business I think it’s very important to have their own sense of responsibility. Business have to condemn and oppose these acts just as strongly as they can. Civil society organisations obviously are often under direct threat themselves and obviously it’s not their responsibility to try to protect themselves, but there are other things that civil society organizations can do, like working together to publicize cases, to bring legal assistance to local groups and, in general, to build the capacity of the people who are at the frontline of protecting the environment.
