New visual materials depict the human rights obligations and responsibilities related to the environment 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 . 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 . Procedural rights such as the rights to assembly expression and information are critical to environmental protection 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 recent years there has been a growing trend in people and organisations also using europes unparalleled system for protecting human rights to help tackle environmental problems a number of the international legal standards developed by the council of europe notably including the european convention on human rights the european social charter and the bern convention on the