"The Americas: Governments should strengthen, not weaken, environmental protection during COVID-19 pandemic", 13th August 2020

Too many countries in the Americas have loosened environmental safeguards in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, when they should be improving them to protect their people’s health, a UN human rights expert and an expert from the Organization of American States (OAS) said today.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment and the Special Rapporteur for Economic, Social, Cultural and Environmental Rights from the OAS’s Inter-American Commission for Human Rights today issued a joint statement to highlight challenges related to the Covid-19 pandemic and the global environmental crisis:

“The current pandemic has revealed the already fragile state of environmental protection in many countries of the Americas. The pandemic has exacerbated existing patterns of inequalities, and it is no coincidence that areas with higher levels of environmental pollution and higher death rates from COVID-19 are the same in which historically discriminated against people live.

The situation of the environment and human rights in the Americas was already a cause of concern prior to COVID-19. Instead of seeing Governments improve environmental safeguards in response to the pandemic, a number of regressions have been observed, with consequences on the enjoyment of the right to a healthy environment in the region...