First day as UN Special Rapporteur for the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment
Today I assume as the UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. I am privileged to succeed Dr. David Boyd, a lawyer from Canada who served in this role masterfully for six years and who, in turn, succeeded Professor John Knox, who was the first Rapporteur in this mandate. Today it is my turn to be the first person from and in the Global South to assume a mandate related to environmental issues, and also the first woman. This honor is shared with Elisa Morgera, who’s tenure as Special Rapporteur on human rights and climate change also starts today.
I am aware of the honor and great responsibility that this Rapporteurship entails. I am also privileged to receive a mandate from such good leadership, and to have had the fortune to learn from and collaborate with the previous Rapporteurs, since 2012 when the mandate was created. Therefore, receiving this Rapporteurship is immensely meaningful, for which I am deeply grateful with the UN Human Rights Council for trusting me this role.
I am also aware of the importance of this recognition for Colombia, where I was born and studied, for Mexico where I have worked and lived for twenty years and for Latin America and the Global South, where I am from. The many messages of support, the congratulations, even with tears of emotion, especially from women and young people, some of whom I did not even know, have helped me realize once more, that representation matters and the importance of the role I am assuming today. I am deeply grateful for each of these expressions of support, and assume this mandate with great responsibility and committed to contribute my best efforts towards the solutions that the planet and people urgently need. Moreover, I am happy to know that, although I have been the first, I am sure I will not be the last.
Leading the mandate of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment in the midst of the multiple planetary crises with climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss is an immensely and challenging task. Especially since the consequences are aggravated by structural inequalities, and those who have contributed the least are the ones suffering the most from these impacts. All this while the multiple efforts to solve this situation do not produce the expected and necessary results.
At the same time, there are viable and hopeful solutions, which also provide a wealth of experience and valuable scientific information that it is important to take advantage of and promote. Examples abound, from community projects to generate alternative management and access to water and energy, to the use of ancestral knowledge to produce food in a healthy and sustainable way, among many others. All this valuing and prioritizing collaboration over competition, the contribution and leadership of women, and considering human rights and the planet at the center.
To this end, the implementation of the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment provides a vital opportunity for greater understanding of the obligations of States to respect, protect and fulfill this right, as well as the role of non-State actors. This will be my main task as Rapporteur to be implemented through the reports, visits, communications, events and other activities to develop. A task that I look forward to carry out in close collaboration with people from other UN Special Procedures, the Office of the High Commissioner and various UN agencies, States, civil society, social movements, Indigenous Peoples, children and adolescents, women, Afro-descendant peoples, among many others.
