Right to the environment

The right to the environment is a human right to live in a safe, clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, and to enjoy it. This right is considered a precondition to enjoy other human rights. It differs from rights of nature, where the subject of rights is nature. In contrast, in the right to the environment, humans are the subjects of rights.

This right arose from the international concern regarding the possible threats to human health and life that technological development and industrialization pose. It emerged specifically in the 1970s and it was embodied in the declaration of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment in 1972.

The concept was later incorporated into different European constitutions until it was gradually spread to Latin America and included in national constitutions.