Resolution 76/300
The UN General Assembly recognised access to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a universal human right — affirming that this right belongs to everyone, everywhere.
Law & policy
The law behind environmental protection.
Protecting the natural world is increasingly a matter of international law. Our work is grounded in — and helps advance — the frameworks that give environmental protection legal force.
Protecting the natural world is not only a moral cause — it is, increasingly, a matter of international law. Over the past half-century, a growing body of treaties, declarations and human-rights standards has taken shape around the environment: recognising a right to a healthy environment, guaranteeing people a say in the decisions that affect it, and setting shared goals for the climate and the natural world.
Foundation for Gaia works within these frameworks and helps advance them — carrying environmental concerns into the forums where they are shaped, and supporting those closest to the harm to claim the rights these instruments provide. The overview below introduces the main instruments that underpin our work.
The right to a healthy environment
The recognition, in international law, that a clean and healthy environment is a human right that belongs to everyone.
Resolution 48/13
The year before, the UN Human Rights Council became the first UN body to recognise this right, opening the door to the General Assembly’s resolution.
Access and participation rights
The right to information, to take part in environmental decisions, and to justice — the legal foundation of our work.
Principle 10
Established the founding idea that environmental issues are best handled with the participation of everyone concerned — with access to information and to justice. The treaties that follow grew from it.
The Aarhus Convention
A binding treaty giving the public rights to environmental information, to take part in environmental decisions, and to seek justice when those rights are denied. It applies across much of Europe and Central Asia.
The Escazú Agreement
The counterpart for Latin America and the Caribbean — and the first international treaty anywhere to include specific protections for environmental defenders.
Climate
The international framework for the global response to climate change, including the annual Conference of the Parties (COP).
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
The foundational climate treaty, under which almost every country meets each year at the COP to negotiate the global response to climate change.
The Paris Agreement
A legally binding treaty in which countries committed to limit global warming and to strengthen their climate action over time.
Biodiversity and nature
The treaties protecting the diversity of life, and the ecosystems we all depend on.
Convention on Biological Diversity
The principal international treaty for conserving biological diversity, using nature sustainably, and sharing its benefits fairly.
Global Biodiversity Framework
The Kunming-Montreal framework sets a global plan to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 — including the goal of protecting 30% of land and sea.
The rights of Indigenous peoples
The rights of the peoples who steward much of the world’s biodiversity — including to their lands, and to free, prior and informed consent.
Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP)
Sets out the individual and collective rights of Indigenous peoples, including to their lands, territories and resources, and the principle of free, prior and informed consent.
ILO Convention 169
The main binding treaty specifically concerning Indigenous and tribal peoples, including their rights to consultation and to their lands.
This overview is provided for education and information. It is a plain-language summary of selected instruments, not legal advice.
A right that cannot be claimed is only words. Our work is to turn environmental law into protection that people can use.
Why law and policy matter to us