WikiForHumanRights

The aim of the #WikiForHumanRights campaign is to make sure that everyone has access to neutral, fact-based, and current information around our Right to a Healthy Environment. The Right to a healthy environment is a legal right acknowledged by the UN, but also a way of connecting human rights and the triple planetary crisis we face: climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss. As the UN Environmental Program highlighted: we need to make Peace with Nature, and human rights need to be at the center of the solutions.

The role of Wikipedia has never mattered more than now. Everyone everywhere needs access to information about how climate change or environmental degradation impacts their lives. We can increase knowledge about the healthy natural systems upon which all people rely for the water they drink, the air they breathe, the food they eat, and the resources they need. With #WikiForHumanRights this year, we are focusing on the implications of the right to a healthy environment on humans experiencing the intersecting three planetary crises: climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.

Information plays a critical role in our shared ability to not only understand these interconnected crises but also mitigate the causes and adapt for a healthy future for all. Fulfilling the human right to a healthy environment empowers those most affected by environmental harms such as pollution, climate change, and biodiversity loss to defend the environment, participate in decision-making, and access justice and human rights protection. Filling gaps on Wikipedia about these topics, helps the public make the thousands of decisions needed to address these pressing environment crises.

Following new recognition from the UN Human Rights Council that having a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is a human right, we have a renewed opportunity to help people around the world better understand and claim their right to a healthy environment.

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Watch the WikiForHumanRights 2022 Campaign Video

Topics in focus:

The Right to a healthy environment

The importance of environmental justice, climate justice, and human rights centered approaches to local, national, and international action on the climate crisis
Human wellbeing in the face of environmental damage caused by pollution, with a focus on the direct impact on other human rights (i.e. pollution and health, right to water, etc)
Biodiversity and human rights — understanding how human wellbeing is dependent on a biodiverse natural ecosystem