How does this information link with the recommendations? • This information highlights the different approaches adopted in member’s States. In encouraging governments to afford human rights appropriate legal recognition and protection, including a right to an environment of particular quality, NHRIs should consider: • the appropriate form for protecting human rights; • the language they will use to describe human rights, especially the right to an environment of a particular quality; • whether they will advocate for a broad right to an environment of a particular quality or specific elements of the right; • whether specific human rights should attach to individuals and/or communities; and • whether they will advocate for human rights that impose obligations on both the state and citizens: recommendations 1.1, 1.2. • Lobbying governments to afford legal recognition and protection to procedural rights may be another option open to NHRIs. Of particular note is the Thai Constitution, which enunciates rights relating to community participation and access to information in environmental matters, and ‘judicial rights’ more generally. In lobbying for legal recognition and protection enshrining procedural rights, NHRIs should consider whether they wish to lobby for individual and/or community procedural rights: recommendations 2.3, 3.1 and 3.2. • Legal recognition of environmental human rights, while important, is insufficient if those rights are not fully implemented. NHRIs should take note of the experiences of certain Member States where actual implementation of constitutional provisions relating to the environment has been problematic: recommendations 3.1 – 3.4. Does legislation in APF Member States guarantee a right to environment or related rights? A. Substantive environmental rights Some states guarantee a substantive right to environment in legislation; however, the language used to describe such a right varies from country to country. Examples include: • • • • a ‘right to environment’;138 a ‘right of the people to a healthful environment’; 139 a right to live in an ‘environment and surroundings which are conducive to health’; 140 and a right to ‘use natural resources in accordance with customary traditions and practices which encourage community-based sustainable natural resource management’. 141 138 Environmental Quality Act 1974 (Malaysia) Ibid 121. Asia Pacific Forum, above n.4. p. 156. 140 National Health Act 2007 (Thailand). Ibid 167, 168. 141 Environment Law 2007 (Afghanistan) art 7(1). 139 - 40 -