Global inequality in environmental conditions underpinning human rights

In July 2022, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution recognizing the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. This milestone achievement integrates environmental law and human rights under a unified framework, one that aims to address environmental injustices globally. Here we assess the likelihood of an individual being exposed to combinations of five environmental conditions which underpin human rights in the UN framework – clean air, safe water, safe climate, healthy and sustainably produced food and healthy biodiversity and ecosystems. Globally we find locations with a disproportionate frequency of multiple poor environmental conditions that exceed expectations based on population size. We also analyse inequalities within countries and find that, first, populations inhabiting Indigenous lands and Persons of Concern (such as refugees, internally displaced persons), face a higher likelihood of poor environmental conditions than people not falling into these groups; and, second, that wealthier areas experience better conditions than poorer areas within countries across the majority dimensions, with the exception of biodiversity which is higher in poorer areas within nations. While each nation must determine its own pathway for realizing environmental rights for its population, these results show that an immediate focus for policy should be on assessing and reducing the inequality in the environmental conditions on which environmental rights are based so that multiple rights relating to clean air, safe water, safe climate, healthy and sustainably produced food and healthy biodiversity and ecosystems can be realized globally.