GENEVA, Europe Brief News – A UN Environmental report published on Tuesday claimed that Pollution by states and companies caused more deaths globally than Covid’19 Virus. UN asked for immediate and forceful actions to prohibit any use of toxic chemicals.
The Report suggests that Pollution from pesticides and plastic waste causes widespread human rights violations. At least 9 million deaths are recorded from pollution each year while Covid’19 has caused nearly 5.9 million deaths.
David Boyd, U.N Special Rapporteur said “Current approaches to managing risks posed by pollution and toxic substances are clearly falling, resulting in widespread violation of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment”.
He further added that he believes that we have an ethical and legal responsibility to do better by these people.
The U.N human right council has made it clear that a clean environment is a human right and any violation of this right will not be acceptable. The Council even posted a Document regarding it on it’s website.
The Council suggested the governments take immediate action and impose a proper ban on the use of polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl.
Both of these are man-made substances and mostly used for household products like non-stick cookware. These are also known as forever chemicals because it’s really hard to get rid of them.
Removal Of Communities From Sacrifice Zones
The Council also advised to clean up polluted locations and even remove the communities from polluted sites. The people who are usually living in such places are poor and marginalised. These places are also known as “ Sacrifice Zones”.
Sacrifice Zones can be described as places where fenceline communities where residents, mostly low income families, live in proximity to polluting industries or military bases that expose them to different kinds of dangerous chemicals and other threats.
Boyd said “ What I hope to do by telling these stories of Sacrifice zones is to really put a human face on these otherwise inexplicable , incomprehensible statistics ( of pollution death tolls)”.
U.N. Rights Chief Michelle Bachelet considers environmental threats to be a huge global rights challenge. And he believed that the increasing numbers of environmental justice cases supplicating human rights with success.
The U.N. Environment Conference is all set to begin In Nairobi, Kenya from Feb 28. And as per reports Chemical waste will be an important part of negotiation at the conference.
