Description
In July 2022, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) adopted a resolution recognizing the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Universally recognizing that every human being has access to a healthy environment is a significant step to protect human well-being and inter-generational justice in times of planetary crisis, climatic challenges, biodiversity depletion and pollution. Behind this recognition stands a decades-long advocacy process involving a wide range of actors, including civil society organizations, UN special mandate holders, a core group of governments and business representatives.
In this paper, I analyze the role of the R2HE Coalition in recognizing the right to a healthy environment. The R2HE Coalition is an alliance of civil society actors from environmental NGOs, development actors, human rights advocates, gender groups, youth organizations, trade unions and indigenous peoples' representatives. What role exactly did the coalition play in the recognition process? How did it convince and/or persuade states to recognize a collective right that many governments have been hesitating to commit to for several decades?
I argue that the R2HE Coalition can be understood as a "super-network". These are collaborative transnational advocacy networks (TANs) operating across policy fields and building a network structure above individual TANs. In a super-network, several TANs that might have competed for resources and states' attention previously, decide to collaborate and apply innovative and new common tactics pressuring states from above via the collaborative network and from below via individual networks.
My research is based on expert interviews with NGOs, TAN representatives and individual advocates of the R2HE coalition. I have also interviewed representatives of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) as well as the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment. In addition to this, I have conducted a document analysis of primary materials used by the coalition and undertook participatory observations at the strategic meetings of the R2HE coalition.
