Reframing human rights in sustainable development

Environmental issues are increasingly complex and difficult to resolve. Human rights may provide an avenue for individuals to gain protection against damage caused by environmental degradation. At the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20 Conference) in June 2012, a number of human rights were canvassed. The Future We Want is the agreement of 193 member states of the United Nations who were represented at the Rio+20 Conference. The final version of The Future We Want focuses on poverty eradication and discusses many other important human rights including access to food, water, health, employment and education as well as the procedural rights to participation and access to information. This paper explores ways in which human rights can be reframed in sustainable development as a possible approach to addressing environmental problems. One commentator who has adopted this approach is Linda Hajjar Leib. In her book Human Rights and The Environment: Philosophical, Theoretical and Legal Perspectives she proposes a reconfiguration of the human rights system in a way that is inspired by sustainable development. The question addressed in this paper is whether Leib’s approach to placing human rights in the context of sustainable development provides a useful framework for addressing environmental problems in international environmental law. It is argued that the concept of the common concern of humankind (CCH) provides a preferable approach to human rights and sustainable development when addressing the complexity of environmental issues in international law.