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The
report said pollution from pesticides, plastics and electronic
waste is causing widespread human rights violations as well as
at least 9 million premature deaths a year, and that the issue
is largely being overlooked.
The coronavirus pandemic has caused close to 5.9 million deaths,
according to data aggregator Worldometer.
"Current approaches to managing the risks posed by pollution and
toxic substances are clearly failing, resulting in widespread
violations of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable
environment," the report's author, U.N. Special Rapporteur David
Boyd, concluded.
Due to be presented next month to the U.N. Human Rights Council,
which has declared a clean environment a human right, the
document was posted on the Council's website on Tuesday.
It urges a ban on polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl, man-made
substances used in household products such as non-stick cookware
that have been linked to cancer and dubbed "forever chemicals"
because they don't break down easily.
It also recommends the clean-up of polluted sites and, in
extreme cases, the possible relocations of affected communities
- many of them poor, marginalised and indigenous - from
so-called "sacrifice zones".
That term, originally used to describe nuclear test zones, was
expanded in the report to include any heavily contaminated site
or place rendered uninhabitable by climate change.
U.N. rights chief Michelle Bachelet has called environmental
threats the biggest global rights challenge, and a growing
number of climate and environmental justice cases are invoking
human rights with success.
(Reporting by Emma Farge; editing by John Stonestreet)
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