With the population constantly increasing, the environment surrounding us is bound to change. Furthermore, the rapid industrializations and fast urban expansions are negatively affecting our environment, undermining the Earth’s capability to sustain life. International Relations takes a deep dive into the environmental works that needs to addressed as approaches to environmental protection between many states have had a bad record of creating a solution where it would have an actual impact on the well being of our environment. There are two main environmental issues currently that have gained the most attention which are climate change and biodiversity. Climate change is the global warming effect caused by humans emitting greenhouse gases, and biodiversity, where the loss of variety of life in the world due to causes like destruction of ecosystems for natural resources or industrialization.

There have been many efforts to tackle these issues, like holding ‘megaconferences”, large scale events, like the Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 or the 2015 Paris Agreement. An interesting point in the reading, “The right to a healthy environment and the global commons are ideas that suggest that it is our shared duty to take care of our collective environment because everyone has a right to enjoy their environment and use some of its resources for their survival”, which brings up the fact that it is our right to have a healthy environment as it is stated on Article 25 of the UDHR, the right to a standard living adequate for the health and wellbeing of himself and of his family. That would mean that we are the ones violating our own human rights, which makes this whole topic even more complex for me.

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