UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Environment, David Boyd with the President Major General Jioji Konrote and AG Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum [Source: Fijian Government]

UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Environment, David Boyd has commended Fiji for including Article 40 in the 2013 Constitution.

Article 40 says every person has a right to a clean and healthy environment including the right to the protection of nature for the benefit of present and future generations.

Speaking at the 20th Attorney-General’s Conference Boyd says the first time this right was ever written down in a legal context was in the Stockholm Declaration which came out of the world’s first big environmental conference in 1972.

He explained that the Stockholm Declaration has had a profound impact on environmental law, human rights law, international environmental law and constitutional law over the past 45-years.

“So then if we take countries that have the right to environment either in their Constitutions or in regional Human Rights treaties, or in national legislation we get a 155 or the UN’s 193 countries.”

Boyd offered his expertise to help other small Pacific Island countries to incorporate right to healthy environment in their legal systems.