ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AND THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES UNDER INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW

Abstract

Industrialization and development result in increased economic activity globally, which in turn, exerts relentless pressure on the world’s environment. Despite prolific growth of environmental laws and policies to regulate actions affecting the environment, world economy continues in the profligate exploitation of natural resources at unsustainable degrees. The ensuing environmental degradation impacts on people’s enjoyment of fundamental rights, intensifying the struggle for environmental justice, including the clamour for indigenous peoples’ rights across nations. Concept of environmental justice seeks to address the emerging issues of fair and equal distribution of environmental burdens and benefits through the principle of inclusiveness at the local, national and international plane. This aims at securing a meaningful participation in decision and policy-making processes by the indigenous populations mostly affected by environmental damage, and guarantee adequate recourse to redress. Accordingly, indigenous populations disparately beset by environmental degradation ‘are increasingly framing their demands for environmental justice’ in the context of human rights. This paper therefore, investigates the prospects and perils of using the concept of environmental justice as a means to advance indigenous peoples’ rights within the purview of international human rights law. The work finds that, irrespective of ever-increasing pressures on indigenous peoples’ environment and natural resources by outside factors such as climate change, globalization and state actions, their rights are yet to be fully articulated in international law. It argues that, failure to protect the environment may somehow, violate the collective rights of indigenous peoples to their ancestral lands and resources resulting in environmental injustice. It thereafter concludes with useful recommendations.