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From 1987 to mid 2002 the world population has grown from 5 billion people to more than 6.2 billion. Another estimated 3 billion are to arrive between now until 2050. Inevitably, to sustain such an unprecedented population growth, already an immense strain has been placed on human communities and natural ecosystems around the world, which will grow in intensity within the years to come. This is especially true in developing countries, where many of the inhabitants continue to reside in abject poverty, where they lack life's basic needs and amenities, such as adequate shelter and food, clean drinking water, unpolluted air, proper sanitation facilities or access to primary health care.
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Contaminated beach in Chimbote (© Stefan Austermühle / Mundo Azul) |
Additionally, the last fifty years of chemical and industrial development have caused the creation of an uncountable number of previously unknown substances and products reaching from plastic bags to highly toxic dioxins.
Contamination does not respect international borders. Contaminants are transported by wind and marine currents on a global scale. Contamination is already everywhere - even in the most isolated and pristine environments like Antarctica.
Our planet is a limited space - we will have nowhere to go once we have poisoned it to death.
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Contamination will become the greatest killer of humans and wildlife within the next few generations.
Already the World Health Organization
(WHO) has estimated that 1.1 billion people lack basic access to drinking
water resources, while 2.4 billion people have inadequate sanitation
facilities, which accounts for many water-related acute and chronic
diseases.
Some 3.4 million people, many of them young
children, die each year from water-borne infectious diseases, such as
intestinal diarrhea (cholera, typhoid fever and dysentery), caused by
microbially contaminated water supplies that are linked to deficient
or non-existent sanitation and sewage disposal facilities. In addition,
many freshwater streams, lakes and groundwater aquifers around the world
are increasingly becoming contaminated with industrial discharges and
agricultural runoffs that carry high concentration levels of toxic chemical
substances and hazardous wastes.
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Air pollution continues to be a major environmental problem in many regions of the world today. In the past two to three decades, increased urbanization and industrialization in developing countries has resulted in a steady decline of air quality that poses a significant threat to health for large segments of human populations. Annually, air pollution accounts for an estimated 3 million deaths, which is about 5% of the 55 million deaths that occur worldwide each year.
There are reports of at least 162 marine species that suffer deaths from ingested waste particles. Annually around 100,000 marine mammals worldwide are estimated to die because of ingestion of plastic waste - 30,000 of them being sea lions. Worldwide 700,000 to 1 million marine birds die because of waste ingestion each year.
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Contamination affects everybody. Even though
negligent governments and companies are to blame principally for the
contamination problem, it is also caused by every consumer - every day.
The contamination caused by us will seriously affect our children.
The World Health Organization's (WHO) Constitution's Preamble (adopted in 1945 and ratified in April 1948) defines the right to health, and the responsibility of individuals, institutions and governments, which states in part: "The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, political belief, economic or social condition."
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted and proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948. It recognizes the right to life in Article 3 and the right to health in Article 25.
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1966 (and entered into force in January 1976), affirms the right to health in Article 12. (1), where "States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health."
The 1987 Brundtland Commission Report
("Our Common Future") defined the concept of sustainable development
and included a set of General Principles, Rights and Responsibilities
for achieving environmental protection and sustainable development.
Its broad first principle of human rights was presented as follows:
"All human beings have the fundamental right to an environment
adequate for their health and well-being."
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Unauthorized waste dump on coastal cliff in Pucusana - cleaned up in 2005 by Mundo Azul (© Stefan Austermühle / Mundo Azul) |
In the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, which was also adopted at the 1992 UNCED meeting, representatives from developed and developing countries recognized the right to a clean and healthy environment as an overarching human entitlement: "Principle 1: Human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development. They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature."
Therefore contamination is not only an ecological crime: Contamination is a crime against the basic human right to live in a healthy environment.
Negligence of the problem is a crime equally against human rights. Therefore governments on municipal, regional and national level, that do not attend the problem, are violating basic human rights.
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Companies that do contaminate the environment or do not employ best available technologies in order to avoide or reduce contamination and recycle their products or production effluents do not only commit environmental crimes, they violate basic human rights.
Every citizen that does not change his lifestyle in order to avoid or reduce contamination and that does not take part in recycling efforts, is part of the problem.
This campaign is not only about some poor little animals somewhere in the rainforest. This campaign is about you - and about your children.
In order to solve the problem, your action and your support is needed.
See what Mundo Azul is doing against contamination and how you can help:
Download: Report: "Human Rights and Contamination" (PDF - english)
"Clean-up
Peru" Campaign
"Stop the Poison" Campaign
