• In 2022, the United Nations affirmed the basic human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
• The idea is straightforward: people’s fundamental human rights to health, food, security and even life rely on a healthy environment.
• But we are still far from ensuring that these rights are protected for the coastal communities living with the consequences of ocean decline every day, a new op-ed argues.
• This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Months after a container ship went down off the coast of India, toxic pollution still contaminates the water and plastic pellets still wash ashore. Meanwhile, cleanup efforts continue, fishing restrictions remain, and legal claims crawl through the courts.

When one shipwreck can unravel a season’s income or undermine health and public safety, it’s clear that ocean decline is a human rights story as much as an environmental one.

In 2022, the United Nations affirmed the basic human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. The idea is straightforward: people’s fundamental human rights to health, food, security and even life rely on a healthy environment. But we are still far from ensuring that these rights are protected for the coastal communities living with the consequences of ocean decline every day.

Corporations have devastated livelihoods of fishing communities in the Niger Delta by spilling crude oil, discharging toxic effluents, and gas flaring. Image via the Coalition for Human Rights in Development.

Coastal communities are on the frontline

Across the global ocean, local pressures like overfishing, oil spills, pollution and habitat loss from destructive development are colliding with planetary threats like climate change and plastic pollution, eroding basic rights to food, health, safety and culture. Consider just a few examples of how coastal communities bear the brunt:

West Africa: In Senegal and Ghana, small-scale fishing has long anchored coastal life. Today, large distant-water and industrial fleets are impinging on small-scale fishers’ resources and rights. When they take too much, when access deals are opaque, or when rules go unenforced, local fishers are pushed off traditional grounds in a pattern scholars and advocates call “ocean grabbing.” In both countries, the result is visible in households and markets: it robs communities of income, agency and even food from the table as local catches are diverted to distant markets or converted to fishmeal for aquaculture.

**Peru: **Nothing puts human rights to the test as acutely as a sudden disaster. On Peru’s coast in 2022, an oil spill shut down fisheries and shattered communities. More than 1,500 artisanal fishers suddenly found their boats idle and markets closed. The rights at stake were plain: health, work and food. People needed transparent assessments, clear risk communication and fast, fair compensation. Instead, coastal residents ended up cleaning the mess with little support while compensation stalled.

Alaska: Not every environmental issue comes with sirens and headlines. Indeed, the most difficult crises to rally around can be the ones that advance inch by inch. Along the Alaskan coast, warming seas thin the ice that once blunted autumn storms. In Shishmaref, a remote Inupiat community that clings to a narrow barrier island now crumbling into the sea, the right to a healthy ocean is a passing dream for future generations. Communities must now have a real voice in the hardest choices, like whether to protect their place or relocate, how to sustain language and tradition, and what place the ocean will have in their culture, if moving becomes unavoidable.

From West Africa to the Arctic Circle and along countless other beleaguered coastlines, those least responsible for the damage — Indigenous communities, women and small-scale fishers — carry the heaviest burdens and are too often kept out of decisions.

Part of the fix is basic freedom. People must be able to speak, organize and protest without fear. And yet, around the world, community leaders and advocates who stand up for their coasts have faced harassment, criminal charges and even violence. Protecting these ocean defenders is inseparable from protecting the ocean itself.

Unloading a healthy harvest in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Image by Asian Development Bank via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

Governments and the private sector have responsibilities

To turn recognition of the human right to a healthy ocean into real-world protections, governments must lead the way. That means enshrining the right to a healthy ocean in law — and making it operational through policy.

Promises on paper alone won’t cut it; people need visible gains on the water. Treat investments in protecting and restoring coastal ecosystems like reefs, seagrass and mangroves as investments in living infrastructure that protects homes and harbors while supporting fisheries. Ensure effective fisheries management so that seasons are more predictable and household incomes steadier. Cut harmful fishing subsidies so fewer oversized trawlers press into nearshore grounds. Reduce pollution and plastics at the source so beaches are cleaner and seafood is healthier. And plan new ports, tourism projects and shipping corridors so they don’t trade away community safety for expediency.

Every coastal permit or access deal, from ports and energy infrastructure to aquaculture and large fishing agreements, should pass a simple rights test: Who will be affected? How will they shape the decision? If things go wrong, what remedy is available and who pays? Communities also need courts and independent bodies they can reach without prohibitive costs or retaliation.

It’s critical to match public action with corporate responsibility. Companies must prevent and reduce harms to the environment and to people, in line with national and international law. From ports to tourism and energy, firms should avoid irreversible impacts on critical habitats, ecosystems and species, or apply strict safeguards to ensure people are not harmed.

That starts with environmental and social impact assessments co-designed and discussed with local people and which are updated regularly. Just as important, companies must know what is happening across their supply chains — mapping, verifying and fixing problems — so responsibility doesn’t stop at the factory gate or the dock. And if harm occurs, remedy should quickly follow.

Grassroots organizations such as the Community Development Advocacy Foundation (CODAF) advocate for the right to healthy waters for all. Image via the Coalition for Human Rights in Development.

Coastal communities need a voice and support

Finally, participation is not optional, it is a basic human right that’s only possible when governments and companies guarantee communities a voice. To ensure healthy oceans for all people everywhere, governments and the private sector must start by providing three basic guarantees to people who live by the tide: the right to know what is planned for nearby waters, the right to take part in shaping those decisions, and a clear path to justice and timely remedy when harm occurs.

And when actions are taken to protect marine resources and communities, local people must be in the driver’s seat. Their customary and human rights must be protected. They must have a say in setting the rules and be provided with the resources to implement them.

In the Western Indian Ocean, for example, temporary, locally led fishing closures — what’s known as regular “no-take” periods — have helped rebuild octopus stocks and household incomes by pairing traditional knowledge with science and transparent monitoring. And in Brazil, Mothers of the Mangrove, a women-led effort to protect and restore more than 150,000 hectares (over 370,000 acres) of mangroves, is safeguarding a nursery for fish and a buffer for communities against storms.

These community-led efforts have a powerful impact, but the threats to our oceans are bigger than any village. Small-scale fishers cannot police distant-water fleets. Villages should not be left to clean up spills while compensation lags. Coastal communities displaced by rising seas will need funding for a safe, dignified plan for relocation.

Success in safeguarding the oceans should be judged by human measures. Did a local fishing boat launch this morning and return with a legal, decent catch? Are families able to hold on to their homes and their cultural identity? Will a child born today inherit plastic-free shorelines and waters that still feed them?

When the answer to those questions is “no,” those who are responsible should be held to account using a human rights framework.

When those answers turn to “yes” in more places, we’ll know the human right to a healthy ocean has moved from paper to practice, and that governments and corporations are following the lead of coastal communities.

Nathan Bennett* is the global oceans lead scientist at WWF and chair of the People and the Ocean Specialist Group for the International Union for Conservation of Nature.*

*Related audio from Mongabay’s podcast: A recent advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on climate change was celebrated by island nations for providing certainty on their maritime boundaries regardless of sea level rise, listen to our discussion with environmental lawyer Angelique Pouponneau here: *

See related coverage:

Brazil’s ‘Mothers of the Mangroves’ protect an ecological and cultural heritage

Peruvian fishers sue for additional compensation after big December oil spill

Citations:

Queffelec, B., Bonnin, M., Ferreira, B., Bertrand, S., Teles Da Silva, S., Diouf, F., … Toonen, H. (2021). Marine spatial planning and the risk of ocean grabbing in the tropical Atlantic. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 78(4), 1196-1208. doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsab006

Bennett, N. J., Alava, J. J., Ferguson, C. E., Blythe, J., Morgera, E., Boyd, D., & Côté, I. M. (2023). Environmental (in)justice in the Anthropocene ocean. Marine Policy, 147, 105383. doi:10.1016/j.marpol.2022.105383

Bennett, N. J., López de la Lama, R., Le Billon, P., Ertör, I., & Morgera, E. (2023). Ocean defenders and human rights. Frontiers in Marine Science, 9, 1089049. doi:10.3389/fmars.2022.1089049

Bennett, N. J., Morgera, E., & Boyd, D. (2024). The human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable ocean. npj Ocean Sustainability, 3(1). doi:10.1038/s44183-024-00057-7

McCabe, M. K., Mudge, L., Randrianjafimanana, T., Rasolofoarivony, N., Vessaz, F., Rakotonirainy, R., … Cox, C. (2024). Impacts of locally managed periodic octopus fishery closures in Comoros and Madagascar: Short-term benefits amidst long-term decline. Frontiers in Marine Science, 11. doi:10.3389/fmars.2024.1358111