Recommendation 2272 (2024)1Provisional version

Mainstreaming the human right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment with the Reykjavik process

Parliamentary Assembly

1. The Parliamentary Assembly refers to its Resolution 2545 (2024) “Mainstreaming the human right to asafe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment with the Reykjavik process”.

2. The Assembly maintains that the recognition of the right to a healthy environment must be based on ahuman rights approach. In this regard, it reaffirms its Recommendation 2211 (2021) “Anchoring the right to ahealthy environment: need for enhanced action by the Council of Europe”, in which it proposedcomplementary tools to achieve this.

3. The Assembly notes that the Council of Europe already offers a convention ecosystem covering manyaspects of the right to a healthy environment. It sees this as an opportunity to capitalise on existing standards.

4. The Assembly therefore recommends that the Committee of Ministers:

4.1. actively support the work of the Intersecretariat Task Force on the Environment established following the 4th Council of Europe Summit, and carefully consider its proposals when drawing up a strategy and an action plan;

4.2. give utmost priority to implementing the encouragement made in Reykjavik to set up an ad hoc intergovernmental committee to organise, co-ordinate and run the implementation of the strategy and the action plan;

4.3. devote the normative part of the strategy to the formal recognition of the right to a healthy environment at the level of the Council of Europe, by developing a binding legal instrument as soon as possible;

4.4. in so doing, focus on the rapid implementation of Recommendation 2211 (2021), including devising a specific, autonomous instrument covering substantive rights and procedural matters relating to the environment that capitalises fully on the standards which have already been drawn up;

4.5. ensure that the draft convention superseding and replacing the Convention on the Protection of the Environment through Criminal Law (ETS No. 172), currently being prepared within the Council of Europe, incorporates the notion of ecocide as a criminal offense and establishes an effective monitoring mechanism;

4.6. give the ad hoc intergovernmental committee a multidisciplinary role, enabling it to act as an interface between the Council of Europe and civil society in its broadest sense and to carry out activities aimed at environmental monitoring and governance as soon as it has been set up;

4.7. highlight the committee’s added value in dealings with the Organisation’s other bodies, with which effective and focused partnerships may be established to drive forward change in environmental monitoring and governance;

1. Assembly debate on 18 April 2024 (12th sitting) (see Doc. 15955, report of Committee on Social Affairs, Health andSustainable Development, rapporteur: Mr Simon Moutquin). Text adopted by the Assembly on 18 April 2024 (12th sitting).

Recommendations 2271 to 2274

4.8. set up a rapporteur group on environmental affairs at Committee of Ministers level to ensure unity and co-ordination in decision making.

13 DE MAIO DE 2024 _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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