Human rights and the environment are intrinsically intertwined a safe clean healthy and sustainable environment reinforces our human rights whilst polluted hazardous and otherwise unhealthy environments potentially violate our human rights1 governments must protect businesses must respect and people must exercise environmental rights if we wish to tackle environmental challenges essentially environmental rights are an extension of our human rights environmental rights are not . Many constitutions and a number of regional human rights frameworks incorporate an independent right to an adequate and healthy environment insisting on the inextricable link between human rights and the environment in the last few decades human rights advocates are increasingly challenging activity resulting in environmental harms as human rights violations before national and international courts and commissions the international human rights clinic has intervened in the space of human . Linking human rights and environment is a valuable sourcebook that explores the uncharted territory that lies between environmental and human rights legislation more than a theoretical treatise it argues that human rights activism presents a significant opportunity to address the human consequences of environmental degradation and can serve as a catalyst for inspiring ideas and action in the real world. The united nations human rights commission in a draft resolution on human rights and the environment expressed that the preservation of life sustaining ecosystems under conditions of rapid scientific and technological development is of vital importance for the protection of the human species and the promotion of human rights this balance can best be achieved if the right to a clean environment is given an equal status as a human right as the right to development