The need to address the increasing number of environmental conflicts worldwide was the focus of Mapping Environmental Justice, an event organised by the European Environmental Bureau and UNEP’s Brussels office. Unsustainable global production and consumption patterns, along with increasing scarcity of natural resources, are drivers of environmental conflicts and injustices worldwide. Local communities are usually most directly affected by these issues, while often being the most dependent on local natural resources for their livelihood.

The event, which took place on 19 March, saw the unveiling of a new Environmental Justice Atlas, which aims to create greater public awareness of environmental conflicts worldwide by mapping information of this kind. It also included a focus on the role of Europe in environmental conflict and promoting environmental justice.

Insight into progress on environmental justice on the international level was provided by Barbara Ruis, a legal expert at UNEP. Ruis said that “the right to a healthy environment must be recognised as a fundamental right by all States”.

She focused on UNEP’s new Compendium on Human Rights and the Environment, which aims to clarify and raise awareness at the international level of the strong link between human rights and the environment. Ruis further noted that the first ever United Nations Environment Assembly, which takes place this June in Nairobi, will dedicate a symposium to the “Environmental Rule of Law”. That might also be an occasion to continue discussing a definition of “environmental crime.”

For more information: barbara.ruis@unep.org