By: Zoe Grant

In March, I had the opportunity to visit England and participate in the 2018 Human Rights Consortium held at Oxford University. The week-long event was an amazing gathering of human rights advocates from all fields of study and backgrounds. I am incredibly grateful to have attended this collaborative workshop and had the opportunity to meet so many students with a common drive to improve the world we live in for posterity. I would not describe human rights as my primary practice area of interest, but I have found that the latest work being done in this area has real applications in advancing environmentally-conscious agendas.

Often times, recognizing limiting the focus to just the environment as human rights concerns can bring more public attention and support than environment  alone. A recent example of this is the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, which emphasized both environmental risks of constructing new pipelines and violations of human rights of the indigenous populations that would directly face the most harmful impacts of an oil pipeline. In fact, even a United Nations Special Rapporteur raised concerns about human rights violations on the ground. “I…received reports during this mission regarding the criminalization of indigenous peoples asserting their right to protest in the now-world famous struggle of several tribes in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline.” (Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, End of Mission Statement by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Mar. 3, 2017, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=21274&LangID=E).   Similar connections between environmental degradation and human rights violations were also drawn in the Flint Michigan water crisis (SeeFlint Michigan Crisis ‘Not Just About Water,’ UN Rights Experts Say Ahead of President Obama’s Visit,UN News, May 3, 2016, https://news.un.org/en/story/2016/05/528272-flint-michigan-crisis-not-just-about-water-un-rights-experts-say-ahead.) and in response to the Texaco oil spill in Ecuador. (SeeAnastasia Moloney, From Ecuador’s Amazon to President’s Palace, Indigenous Women Demand End to Drilling, Reuters, Mar. 23, 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ecuador-landrights-indigenous/from-ecuadors-amazon-to-presidents-palace-indigenous-women-demand-end-to-drilling-idUSKBN1GZ2N3).

It is no stretch to say the several STEM disciplines are vital to successful environmental solutions. Without a firm grasp of basic principles of biology, chemistry, and geology it is difficult to convey the significance of our planet’s ecology and explain the tangible steps we must take to ensure the environment’s preservation for future generations. Pursuing exposure to other fields will only add to the metaphoric toolbox of any environmental attorney. Issues from public health to human rights are worth engaging with due to their clear interfaces with environmental concerns. While there is value in wrestling with these issues from a purely academic angle, what can be of even greater worth is an understanding of the issues other people are passionate about. By drawing connections between the environment and issues that others already care deeply about, we can expand the environmental community and draw more support for sustainable public policies. In truth, such connections are often easy to make. The environment is so overarching that it influences almost all areas of public concern.

Multidisciplinary approaches to complex environmental problems are nothing new in academia, but courts are now beginning to adopt such an approach as well. In Juliana v. United States, the plaintiffs’ complaint argues that climate change threatens human rights by tying them to Fifth Amendment due process rights to life, liberty, and property.  “Defendants’ aggregate acts of increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have been and are harming Plaintiffs’ dignity, including their capacity to provide for their basic human needs, safely raise families, practice their religious and spiritual beliefs, maintain their bodily integrity, and lead lives with access to clean air, water, shelter, and food.” (Juliana v. United States, First Amended Complaint at 86, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/571d109b04426270152febe0/t/57a35ac5ebbd1ac03847eece/1470323398409/YouthAmendedComplaintAgainstUS.pdf.) Judge Anne Aiken has allowed the case to move forward on these arguments. It is this sort of creative lawyering that results from embracing multidisciplinary solutions to the most pressing environmental problems we now face. The future of the green movement depends on successfully implementing legal tools from fields we may never have previously thought of as impacting the environment.