HRC 52 - Interactive Dialogue with Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment
UNITED NATIONS HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL
52nd session
Interactive Dialogue with Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment
9 March 2023
EU Intervention
Mr Boyd,
I would like to thank you on behalf of the EU for your work related to the human rights and the environment. We appreciate your contribution to the recognition of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment in the General Assembly in July 2022. All EU member states voted in favour of the resolution.
Mr. Boyd, we welcome your latest report on women, girls and the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, in which you underline the disproportionate impacts of the global environmental crisis on women and girlsthrough the lens of substantive and procedural elements of the right. At the same time, your report also draws attention to the necessity of ensuring equal participation of women and girls in all decision making processes related to environment.
The European environmental policy protects nature and preserves and improves the health of European citizens. One of the most important pillars of such protection is gender equity, namely addressing the needs of women and girls, and promoting their full, equal, effective and meaningful participation in all decision-making processes. Gender equality is essential in ensuring access to and sustainable management of environmental resources, as well as the preservation of all of our global commons.
Women around the world are under-represented in environmental decision-making institutions. Therefore, gender disparities impact our adaptation and mitigation strategies, which are at this point neither just nor sustainable. The EU strongly advocates for the need of a transformative approach on those issues.
Mr Boyd, previously you have elaborated on a series of thematic reports on the substantive elements of the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. You plan on addressing the procedural elements of the right in the future. Could you please elaborate on that?
I thank you.