The environmental dimension of sustainable development

In December 2024, Opportunity Green collaborated with Friends of the Earth, Just Fair, and the Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland on a submission to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR). The document aims to shape a draft general comment regarding the environmental dimensions of sustainable development. 

The submission recommends that the general comment include:

• Ways in which states can improve implementation of both substantive and procedural elements of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment to help governments ensure coherence between recent progress in recognising the right to a healthy environment at an international level, and its operationalisation in the domestic context.
• Guaranteeing the right to an adequate standard of living requires reducing buildings’ greenhouse gas emissions by improving energy efficiency and decarbonising domestic heating, and ensuring buildings are resilient to the shocks of the predicted climate conditions of the future. These changes to housing stock must comply with the principles of non-discrimination and equality, and remain affordable.
• States should regulate the right to property to make it compatible with international human rights law obligations to respect, protect and fulfil economic, social and cultural rights, and preserve human rights from the triple planetary crisis of climate breakdown, biodiversity loss and the widespread pollution of air, land and water.

Read briefing