Protecting Our Oceans Protects Human Rights

Today in Geneva, Switzerland, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment will present to the Human Rights Council on the important relationship between the ocean and human rights. Special Rapporteur Astrid Puentes Riaño published the UN’s first report on the ocean and its interconnection with human rights in December 2024, after gathering submissions from governments around the world and over 60 Indigenous Peoples’ and civil society organizations, including Earthjustice. Our attorneys will also be presenting on their submissions, which explore the interconnections between human rights, overfishing, and oceanic oil and gas activities, building upon our decades of human rights advocacy at the United Nations. 

A History of Advocacy 

Earthjustice began to connect human rights duties to climate and environment obligations under international law in the 1990s, with leadership of our UN Representative in Geneva, Yves Lador. We advocated for formal UN recognition of the right to a healthy and sustainable environment until the right was finally adopted in an October 2021 Resolution by the UN Human Rights Council and was confirmed in July 2022 by the UN General Assembly. 

Earthjustice’s longstanding work to defend the health of oceans and the people who depend upon them has contributed to the most recent dialogue at the Human Rights Council that builds upon the human right to a healthy and sustainable environment. Notably, the Special Rapporteur’s Ocean and Human Rights Report highlights a collaborative case between Earthjustice’s Oceans and International Programs. 

Earthjustice’s work has long sought legal recognition of the critical importance of the oceans to the balance of life on Earth. They provide food security for millions of people, underly Indigenous spiritual practices, regulate the planet’s temperatures and currents, counter climate change by absorbing planet-warming carbon dioxide and heat from the atmosphere, produce oxygen, and are the homes to millions of species. Billions of people depend on the ocean and the coast not only for food but for housing, work, culture, spirituality, medicine, transport, and health. Not only are the planet’s oceans’ ecosystems interconnected and interdependent, so too are the people who depend on it. 

Two Key Threats 

Earthjustice attorneys will be speaking at the Geneva Rights and Environment Talks about they work they highlighted in their submissions to the Special Rapporteur’s report.  We will cover two key areas of activity that threaten the ocean as well as human rights: overfishing and offshore oil and gas activities. 

Experts consider overfishing to be the primary threat to global marine biodiversity, which makes it a major threat to the human rights of people that depend on marine ecosystems. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, overfishing has depleted nearly 40 percent of fish stocks worldwide. This reduces fisheries productivity and degrades ecosystems, undermining livelihoods and food security, and is largely driven by large-scale industrial fishing operations. Corporate-driven overfishing disproportionately impacts small-scale and artisanal fishing communities, especially in low-income countries. Outside of regulated or enforced areas, 20 percent of global fish catches occur by illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. These practices contribute to global overfishing and are associated with high rates of forced labor, human trafficking, unsafe working conditions, and other violations of basic human rights. 

“Overfishing also reduces the ocean’s ability to act as a carbon sink. By the century’s end, 45 percent of fish stocks are expected to have shifted habitat due to climate change, with tropical and coastal areas losing access to traditionally fished species.” – UN Special Rapporteur Ocean and Human Rights Report, submitted by Earthjustice 

Like overfishing, offshore oil and gas drilling and exploration poses a growing threat to the ocean and human rights in multiple ways. Offshore gas production could increase 55 percent by 2050, a boom centered in Africa and Latin America; the continued reliance on offshore drilling threatens to undo commitments to fight the climate crisis. Both oil and gas operations also release toxic contaminants into ocean waters. Oil spills and the daily release of toxic produced drilling fluids cause wide-scale harm to fisheries, wetlands, marine wildlife, and the communities that depend on these marine resources for food, income, and recreation. Finally, underwater noise pollution from seismic surveys used to locate oil and gas reserves harms culturally and economically important species. The unceasing blasts from powerful air guns at 10-second intervals, louder than a rocket launch, can upend the lives of whales, seals, sea turtles, and certain fish sensitive to sound. 

A Win for Oceans in South Africa 

In 2022, we supported our South African partners Natural Justice, Richard Spoor Attorneys, and the Legal Resource Centre in their representation of Indigenous communities and organizations living in the Wild Coast along the Eastern Cape Province. These groups successfully challenged harm from Shell Oil and Impact Africa’s offshore oil and gas exploration. The Makhanda High Court halted the project, finding that Shell did not adequately assess the environmental impacts of its proposed ocean drilling activities, which could have had significant consequences for marine biodiversity, the livelihoods, the cultural, and the spiritual rights of coastal communities, as well as climate change. 

This case aligns with a key principle in the Special Rapporteur’s report: Because the relationship between coastal communities, and billions of people beyond, is inextricably linked to the ocean, the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment must be incorporated into all ocean management efforts. And national courts, like South Africa’s, have determined that companies can be held accountable for actions that negatively impact human rights and the ocean. 

Overfishing and oil and gas activities represent only some of the human, corporate-driven activities currently threatening the ocean and human rights. There is no time to waste in heeding the Special Rapporteur’s message that ocean issues are also human rights issues, affecting the rights of present and future generations. To address these threats, we must coordinate our efforts using an ecosystem- and human rights-based approach that recognizes traditional science and knowledge systems. The lives of billions of people around the world depend on it. Read more recommendations in the full Special Rapporteur Report.