Human Rights and the Environment

Question from the Internet:

“Human rights activists have argued that there is an intrinsic relationship between humans and the environment. With reference to this premise, what is the role of human rights in environmental protection?”

I agree with the statement that “there is an intrinsic relationship between humans and the environment.”

There is indeed an intrinsic relationship between individuals and the general human environment and between the general and global human environment and the natural environment.

And we do not have to be “human rights activists” to claim so.

After all, we are all born from nature’s system, and we are still integral parts of nature’s system.

As our global and mutually integrated world shows us every day, we are all irrevocably integrated and interdependent elements of global human society, and humanity is but a single species in nature.

Thus, in effect, we are all but individual cells in humanity’s living organism, which human organism is also an integral and mutually interdependent part of nature’s living system.

And when we will not only talk about it and nod our heads when we hear others talk about our world being “global, integrated and interdependent,” but we also start to viscerally and tangibly feel so, then we will also start to understand that the usual “individual or group rights” we desperately and violently fight for are not real.

After all, if I am a single cell in a body, and in order to remain healthy and survive, I have to willingly agree to selflessly and unconditionally serve the wellbeing and most optimal state of the whole, what individual rights — at least how we understand it — can I have?!

Can I do whatever I want to do only for my own sake? Can I continue our usual path of survival and success at the expense of others and at the expense of nature?!

Then I become like cancer!

So before we fight for “human rights,” first of all, we need to understand the system we exist in; we need to understand our absolute obligations and responsibility towards others and the whole system.

And then, we can start talking about and examining what our actual rights are and where our freedom is found.

And when humanity starts existing and behaving in a mutually responsible and mutually complementing way, since by that, we also become similar to nature’s finely balanced and mutually integrated system; we will understand our true influence over nature’s environment.

As long as we blindly and instinctively follow our inherently egocentric, subjective, and individualistic nature, we remain like cancer both in the human environment and also in relation to nature. If we become healthy cells both in human society and together we also become benevolent towards nature, then we will become the natural environment’s equal and positive partners.

But how we influence nature depends, first of all, on how we behave with each other. Only through the right relationships between human beings, only by building a “nature-like” human environment, can we become positive elements in the natural environment.