The United States Recognizes the Human Right to a Clean, Healthy, and Sustainable Environment

the United States voted in favor of UN General Assembly Resolution 76/300 "recogniz [ing] the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a human right." 1 Just nine and a half months earlier, in October 2021, the United States had opposed the Human Rights Council's recognition of the same right.Not only was the U.S. vote in the General Assembly a reversal of its consistent stance against the right to a healthy environment, it was also a striking exception to the long-standing resistance of the United States to the recognition of "new" human rights.The origins of the right to a healthy environment date back to 1972, when the UN Conference on the Environment adopted the Stockholm Declaration.The Declaration proclaimed that "both aspects of man's environment, the natural and the man-made, are essential to his well-being and to the enjoyment of basic human rights-even the right to life itself" and it stated, in the first of its principles, that people have a "fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being." 2 Since Stockholm, at least 155 states have recognized the right to a healthy environment at the national or regional level. 3 That number includes more than 120 states that are bound by regional treaties that recognize the right; over 100 states that have constitutional protections that acknowledge the right; and above 100 states that have adopted legislation that incorporates the right. 4 Until fifteen months ago, however, the right's success nationally and regionally had not been replicated globally.UN environment and sustainable development conferences subsequent to Stockholm did not adopt or elaborate the right.There was a moment, in the early 1990s, when the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities pursued the topic through the appointment of a Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, Fatma Zohra Ksentini.The special rapporteur's final report, in 1994, proposed a draft declaration stating that: "All persons have the right to a secure, healthy and ecologically sound environment." 5But the Commission on Human Rights did not

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