Willow's Pagan Place

The link between human rights and environmental protection has become
 increasingly clear in recent years. Environmental damage is often
 worse in countries and in areas with human rights abuses. Where
 human rights are weak, civil society groups are not able to raise
 environmental concerns effectively. Rights of association, access to
 justice, access to information and freedom of expression, are critical
 for the success of a country's environmental and human rights movements.

Human rights and environmental abuses take place at different levels
. Activities of private corporations are increasingly contributing to
 human rights violations and environmental degradation. For instance,
 corporations often expel local peoples from their lands, fail to implement
 pollution control measures, suppress local activists who question the
 impacts of their activities, or produce and export chemicals banned in their
 own country that they know will cause serious health problems in the
 country of import. Human rights and environmental abuses are
 often perpetrated in the name of development, as past experience
 with projects of multilateral institutions like the World Bank has
 demonstrated. Poor and rural peoples in developing nations are
 further marginalized by projects such as large dams or gas pipelines
 that claim to reduce poverty, but instead displace local inhabitants and
 exploit their natural resource base. Although rural resource users
 comprise the majority of the citizens of the world, their leverage in 
the global economy is weak. Local communities, including indigenous 
peoples suffer human rights and environmental abuses when national
 and state laws do not recognize their rights, including their rights to
 their land and natural resources. As the linkage between environmental
 and human rights concerns becomes more apparent, it is increasingly
 difficult to differentiate between environmental injustices and human
 rights abuses.

CIEL recognizes the growing connection between threats to the
 global environment and basic human rights. Seeking to identify and
 develop connections between international environmental law and
 human rights law, to integrate the theoretical and advocacy approaches
 of the two movements, and to promote a more just, equitable and
 sustainable approach to natural resource management issues, CIEL
 started a Human Rights and Environment (HRE) Program in 1998.
Program Goals:

The Human Rights and Environment Program has the following goals:
To reduce specific human rights and environmental abuses
 on the ground. This includes ending support for involuntary
 resettlement, publicizing HRE abuses and bringing "cases" to 
an appropriate Forum.

To build the conceptual framework for using human rights
 in protecting the environment. This includes furthering the 
development of substantive human rights and sustainable
 development norms, and to strengthen the procedural and
 institutional framework for promoting HRE.

The Human Rights and Environment Program is closely linked 
with theInternational Financial Institutions (IFI) Program that 
works on reducing the adverse on-the-ground impacts of IFI-financed
 activities; the Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) that is
 working with the public interest community to attain a strong, 
effective and equitable global agreement to eliminate POPs;
 and the Law and Communities Program that works on community
-based property rights issues in the majority world.