Will the Ocean Remain Blue? How Marine Pollution Violates Fundamental Rights | Geneva Rights and Environment Talks

About this Event

A healthy ocean is a fundamental part of healthy biodiversity and ecosystems, one of the substantive elements of the right to a healthy environment (A/HRC/43/53). The ocean also is vital to all other substantive elements of that right, including a safe climate, healthy and sustainable food and water, a non-toxic environment and clean air. 

However, marine pollution caused by unsustainable human activities remains to be one of the ocean’s most devastating challenges: from the scourge of plastic and microplastic pollution; ocean dumping of chemical waste, including a recent unprecedented discharge of radioactive contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean; destructive fishing practices; shipbreaking; land-based pollution including sewage, heavy metals and agrochemicals that eventually end up in the ocean; large-scale offshore drilling and exploration and resource exploitation; constant increase in marine-related projects and operations; to looming threats from pollution from deep-sea mining and marine geo-engineering. Moreover, marginalized communities, particularly large ocean States, bear the brunt of these impacts and are rendered highly vulnerable to the human rights violations caused by marine pollution. 

This Geneva Rights and Environment Talk highlighted the impacts caused by marine pollution on human rights, including the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. It emphasized the obligation of States to prevent environmental harm and the resulting human rights violations, including regulating, controlling and monitoring pollution, undertaking environmental impact assessments and upholding the precautionary principle. 

Various international, regional and national instruments already exist towards protecting and maintaining the ocean’s integrity for present and future generations and ensuring non-regression in environmental standards and protections. These include the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter 1972 (London Convention) and its 1996 Protocol, which aims to promote the effective control of all sources of marine pollution and to take all practicable steps to prevent pollution of the sea by dumping of wastes and other matter, and the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL), which is the main international convention covering prevention of pollution of the marine environment by ships from operational or accidental causes. Other multilateral environmental agreements based in Geneva that help address marine pollution also include the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal and the Minamata Convention on Mercury, highlighting the role that Geneva plays, as a global hub for the governance of hazardous substances, in helping address the human rights implications of pollution. A multilateral binding treaty to end plastic pollution is also being negotiated, as set out by the United Nations Environment Assembly resolution (UNEA 5/14).

In this talk, the Special Rapporteur on the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment shared some of the outcomes of her report to the Human Rights Council (A/HRC/58/59).

Speakers

Astrid PUENTES RIAÑO

UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment

Bernardo ROCA-REY

Minister-Counsellor, Permanent Mission of Peru to the international organizations in Geneva

Doris RAMIREZ

Fisherfolk collective in Champerico, Guatemala

Ava IBANEZ AMADOR

Associate Attorney, Oceans Program, Earthjustice

Bruna CAMPOS

Senior Campaigner, Offshore Oil & Gas, CIEL

Yves LADOR

Representative to UN Geneva, Earthjustice

Diana RIZZOLIO

Coordinator, Geneva Environment Network | Moderator

Highlights

Video

Live from Palais des Nations.

Photo Gallery

Summary

Opening

Astrid PUENTES RIAÑO | UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment

• The ocean is one single biome and represents 70% of the planet. It is not only the place where life on Earth began millions of years ago, but is also a connector, a place where ecosystems and biomes are all interconnected. The ocean is crucial to life.
• The ocean is facing many challenges. Pollution, both marine and from the land, including plastic pollution, is one of the biggest challenges it faces.
• Compartmentalization of issues is also a major problem. Human rights cannot be addressed in an isolated way, but along with their universality, interconnection and indivisibility. Protecting human rights and a healthy environment can’t be done while harming other rights. All human rights should be protected.
• Some of the challenges evoked in the Report of the Special Rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment are pollution from different industries including industrial fisheries and fossil fuel industries, the disorder of coastal urbanization, land pollution, climate change (both its impacts and the activities including fossil fuels that are increasing climate change), deep sea mining, marine engineering and blue economy. All issues are interconnected.
• States have the obligation to respect, protect and fulfill human rights, which includes the obligation to regulate, to control and effectively monitor activities that are happening in the ocean and impacting human rights. States also have to undertake environmental impact assessment to implement the precautionary principle. Additionally, states have the obligation to restore ecosystems, taking into consideration the damage that has already happened in the ocean, which is linked to pollution and plastic pollution. Finally, states have the obligation to cooperate.
• Businesses also have obligations and responsibility to protect human rights, including the right to a healthy environment.

Panel Discussion

Bernardo ROCA-REY | Minister-Counsellor, Permanent Mission of Peru to the international organizations in Geneva

• A healthy ocean is fundamental not only to robust biodiversity and thriving ecosystems but also to the broader right to a healthy environment. It is intimately linked with ensuring a safe climate, sustainable food and water systems, a non-toxic environment, and clean air. However, current levels of marine pollution, including plastics, microplastics, chemical waste, and harmful fishing practices, pose one of the most severe threats to these ecosystems and the rights they support.
• Peru has long demonstrated commitment to combating ocean pollution. This includes its co-sponsorship with Rwanda of the landmark UN Resolution 5/14, which initiated the process for creating a legally binding treaty to end plastic pollution under the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee. Peru also introduced a resolution at the 2023 World Health Assembly on the harmful effects of chemical waste and pollution on human health, reinforcing its dedication to multilateral environmental action.
• Two key upcoming events, the third UN Ocean Conference and the INC 5.2 meeting, present crucial opportunities to advance the plastic pollution treaty. The Ocean Conference, in particular, can offer the political momentum needed to support the INC process, which stands among the most significant environmental initiatives in recent history.
• Every day, the equivalent of 2,000 garbage trucks worth of plastic enters aquatic environments, amounting to 19-23 million tons of plastic waste annually. This pollution reaches lakes, rivers, and seas, making it a global problem with far-reaching environmental and human consequences.
• Addressing plastic pollution effectively requires recognizing that such efforts inherently intersect with the protection of human rights, including the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, and the right to the highest attainable standard of health. A human rights-based approach to the plastic treaty must go beyond token mentions and be integrated into the treaty’s full structure, requiring a comprehensive re-evaluation of the plastic life cycle through this lens.
• Plastic pollution is a transboundary challenge that no single country can resolve on its own. Ocean currents carry pollutants across borders, necessitating strong global cooperation. Pollution, biodiversity loss, and climate change are interconnected crises that jointly threaten a range of human rights such as access to clean water, adequate housing, and public health.
• The harmful impacts of plastic pollution disproportionately affect marginalized and vulnerable populations, exacerbating existing inequalities. Indigenous communities who have long protected ecosystems, coastal countries dependent on eco-tourism, and economically fragile communities are particularly at risk. Countries like Peru exemplify how marine pollution threatens national well-being and livelihoods.
• Gender-specific impacts of plastic pollution must also be addressed. Women and girls are often more exposed to toxic emissions from the burning of plastic waste and are overrepresented among vulnerable groups like waste pickers and informal laborers. These realities highlight the need for an intersectional human rights framework within the treaty.
• The full ecological consequences of plastic pollution are still not fully understood. While distressing images of marine animals entangled in plastic or ingesting it are widely known, scientific understanding of the cumulative and systemic impacts on biodiversity, ecosystems, and human health remains incomplete. Recent studies, such as those identifying “plasticosis” in marine birds in Australia, indicate emerging long-term effects that demand urgent attention.
• The ongoing negotiation of a global treaty on plastic pollution acknowledges the governance gaps across the entire plastic life cycle. Addressing these requires an in-depth understanding of how plastics, from molecular composition to product and eventual waste, affect both ocean health and human rights. Only by grounding the treaty in reliable data and updated scientific evidence can states prevent any dilution of the human rights perspective in negotiations.
• As part of this effort, Peru participated in drafting a Human Rights Council decision that tasked its advisory committee with examining the human rights implications of the plastic life cycle. The recent findings from this study provide further support for integrating human rights comprehensively in future treaty frameworks and serve as a foundation for more informed, effective, and equitable action.

Doris RAMIREZ | Fisherfolk collective in Champerico, Guatemala

• Doris Ramirez comes from a fisher community from the southern coast of Guatemala. The community is gravely affected by climate change and the destruction of mangroves, leading to a rise of temperatures in the estuaries and to a decline in the amount of fish that can be safely fished, thus affecting food security. The water near the fisher folk warms up to the point where there are no fish left in the ocean and they can no longer fish. The fisher folk who fish in the warm period end up spending money to fish but have nothing when they get back.
• The spraying of fertilizers near the primary rivers by monoculture companies and producers also affects fishing communities. These chemicals enter the rivers and then get into the oceans where fishing communities normally fish. As a result of this practice, fisher folks have very often seen fish floating, which worsens the already dire situation of warm waters and the destruction of mangroves.
• Many fishers, who cannot survive without the fish they used to live from, turn into trying to produce agricultural products. This also has been affected by the monocultures and fertilizers, as many primary living fruits have been polluted, further affecting their food security.
• We need to teach people not to drop plastic and plastic waste into the ocean, as the different fish species and turtles eat the plastic and end up suffocating because of this.
• Not only are mangroves destroyed, but they are also affected by the chemicals and fertilizers of the monocultures. When these chemicals arrive into the areas where the mangroves are, they often dry up in the ocean and can then only be used as firewood.

Ava IBANEZ AMADOR | Associate Attorney, Oceans Program, Earthjustice

• Marine pollution from the offshore oil and gas industry poses severe risks to both ecosystems and human rights, contributing significantly to ocean degradation and threatening the wellbeing of coastal communities and marine wildlife. Each year, up to 800 million liters of oil enter the ocean, with catastrophic incidents like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster serving as stark examples of the long-term damage to marine life, local economies, and public health.
• Offshore drilling causes harm beyond oil spills, with routine discharges of produced water and drilling fluids containing heavy metals, carcinogens, and radioactive substances. These toxins bioaccumulate in marine food chains, endangering the health of communities dependent on seafood for sustenance and income.
• The use of seismic blasting in offshore oil and gas exploration introduces extreme underwater noise pollution that severely impacts marine species. This technique disorients, injures, and can even kill animals ranging from microscopic plankton to whales, disrupting marine ecosystems on a massive scale.
• Despite these well-documented harms, governments continue to approve offshore drilling projects without conducting comprehensive impact assessments. Evaluations often fail to cover the full lifecycle of a project, from exploration to decommissioning, leaving critical risks unexamined.
• Approval processes for offshore oil and gas projects frequently lack transparency and exclude meaningful public participation. In many regions, including Latin America, Africa, and the U.S., communities most affected by these projects are not adequately consulted, and indigenous peoples are often denied their right to free, prior, and informed consent.
• Legal decisions in South Africa and Australia have recognized these procedural violations, ruling in favor of communities whose consultation rights were ignored. In Mexico, local populations are resisting gas transport projects in the Gulf of California due to similar concerns, demonstrating widespread resistance to extractive developments that compromise ocean health.
• The most effective way to safeguard marine ecosystems and uphold human rights is to phase out offshore oil and gas entirely. Countries like Belize and Costa Rica have already taken action by banning offshore drilling, setting precedents for proactive protection through legislation and executive decisions.
• Communities across the globe, such as those in the Bahamas, continue to advocate for an end to offshore drilling and for the development of a “blue economy”, an economic model that prioritizes the protection and sustainable use of marine resources over extractive industry profits.
• For countries that continue to rely on offshore oil and gas, stringent safeguards are essential. These include mandatory environmental impact assessments involving independent experts, strict pollution controls, robust emergency response plans, enforceable decommissioning requirements, and genuine community consultation in native languages with real decision-making power.
• The health of the ocean and the protection of human rights are inseparable. Offshore oil and gas pollution not only devastates ecosystems but also contaminates food sources, harms livelihoods, and disrupts cultural practices. Addressing this issue is not merely an environmental priority, it is a moral and legal necessity.
• Transitioning to clean energy and enforcing stricter regulations on offshore oil and gas activities are vital steps toward a future in which healthy oceans continue to sustain life and protect fundamental human rights for generations to come.

Bruna CAMPOS | Senior Campaigner, Offshore Oil & Gas, CIEL

• The full life cycle of offshore oil and gas has major impacts on marine pollution and deleterious consequences on humans and coastal people.
• Offshore oil and gas’ life cycle has four different phases: the exploration phase, the production phase, the transport phase and the decommissioning phase.
• In the exploration phase, things like SONAR (Sound Navigation and Ranging) and argon blasts really affect how marine mammals react under the sea, creating a behavioral change. This is not only a sustenance issue but also affects livelihoods from coastal communities as well as their cultural and spiritual rights.
• Many issues arise from the production phase, such as oil spills, drilling, use of chemicals that contaminate the water and wastewater muds. This affects marine life and has major human health impacts. For instance there has been evidence of increase of uterus cancer for shellfish fisherwomen following an oil spill. Communities are even more affected as governments fail to take care of them and provide reparations.
• The transport phase is often forgotten but also has deleterious impacts. About 40% of all marine cargos around the world transport fossil fuels. Oil spills and accidents are very common – the issue comes both from the ships themselves and the pollution they create, and from the cargos that they’re carrying that also cause the pollution.
• The decommissioning phase, also informally called the abandonment phase because the infrastructure is not being decommissioned, has major impacts as abandoned infrastructure continues leaking. There are good tracking tools e.g. on the Global energy monitor showing what has been abandoned or left behind.
• Blowouts are not rare but happen on a regular basis, and are causing most of the oil pollution. Benthic ecosystems have a really hard time recovering, if they can recover at all. Deepwater Horizon’s blowout happened 14 years ago and still today the corals are not recovering.
• Oil pollution is chronic. The tool Cerulean from SkyTruth tracks oil pollution from oil infrastructure. A key highlight is that, in areas such as the North Sea where a lot of infrastructure is abandoned, there is a lot of oil pollution.
• Gas pollution resulting from gas leaks is also an important issue and has been well documented in the Baltic Sea because of the leak of the North Stream, resulting in massive fish death and harming human rights. For instance, there is a leak ongoing from a drilling project led by BP in Senegal, but BP said it was a negligible leak, however there hasn’t been any evaluation. This leak may harm human rights as 70% of the protein intake in Senegal depends on fish, so a major fish death in that region will have major impacts on the coastal communities of Senegal.
• Greenhouse gas emissions that come from offshore oil and gas is a marine pollutant. The International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) has given its advisory opinion, as requested by States, about the correlation between greenhouse gas emissions and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). There is an obligation of states to deal with greenhouse gas emissions as a marine pollutant, to reduce and remove that pollution itself. The Advisory opinion was clear that taking measures is not sufficient and that measures need to be aligned with UNCLOS. It’s good to start with offshore oil and gas given that these activities are happening in the oceans, but fossil fuels in general should be phased out as there is a transboundary impact of whether they’re coming from the oceans or not.
• What exists from a legal perspective to tackle offshore oil and gas. Existing regional sea conventions only deal with consequences of oil spills and not with the beforehand prevention of oil spills or prohibition of certain activities. Governments should approach offshore oil and gas as a marine pollution but also as a root problem, and not just deal with the aftermath when a problem or accident happens.
• Other global legal agreements such as the International Seabed Authority could deal with the extraction of marine resources, but it doesn’t do it from a protective point of view. This matter requires a shift in mindset on how we look at the ocean, to see the ocean not as a resource to take but as something that we need to protect.

Yves LADOR | Representative to UN Geneva, Earthjustice

• In addition to previously discussed points, there is a need to address chemicals, plastics, and infrastructure-related activities such as dredging, which are all deeply interconnected with the broader issues of ocean health and human rights. These areas are expected to be central topics at the upcoming 2025 UN Ocean Conference in Nice, especially as discussions around the blue economy must account not only for its opportunities but also for its growing negative impacts.
• Chemical pollution of the ocean stems from a wide array of sources, far beyond just oil and fossil fuels. Everyday household products and persistent chemicals are part of the pollution stream, and almost all of what is used on land eventually ends up in the ocean. Even in places with strong sewage treatment systems, like the area around the Rhône River in Geneva, pollutants make their way through river systems and eventually into the Mediterranean Sea and broader oceans.
• While ocean-based sources of pollution like offshore oil extraction are visible and often highlighted, the majority of marine pollution originates from land-based sources. The way plastics are produced, used, and discarded on land contributes directly to the ocean’s degradation. For instance, plastic is not manufactured at sea, yet it dominates marine debris due to mismanagement and overproduction on land.
• Visual data shows increasing risks to ocean health globally, with a particularly stark rise in pollution volumes in Asia over the past decade. African coastal regions are also facing growing pollution, often due to dumping practices, including the export of used clothing from Europe that ultimately becomes waste on African shores. These forms of pollution are frequently tied to plastics and their fossil fuel origins, which require different treatment than direct fossil fuel extraction.
• A concerning trend is the expansion of low-oxygen zones in the ocean, commonly referred to as dead zones. These hypoxic areas are spreading, signaling deep environmental degradation. Similar to land-based dead zones, they point to ongoing and systemic harm from industrial production patterns. These are not isolated incidents or mere accidents but the direct result of continuous, widespread industrial activities.
• Plastics in the ocean now directly affect human food sources, with one in three fish caught for human consumption containing plastic particles. The ubiquity of plastic in seafood highlights how widespread the issue is, prompting critical reflection on how humans are effectively ingesting their own waste through the food chain.
• While certain pollution events are caused by negligence or misconduct, such as harmful shrimp farming practices affecting local communities, there are also routine industrial and consumer activities that create a consistent, unrelenting flow of plastic and chemical pollutants into marine ecosystems. These “normal” activities contribute just as significantly to ocean degradation as large-scale accidents.
• Plastic spills are an emerging environmental crisis, similar in severity to oil spills. One such case is the X-Press Pearl maritime disaster off the coast of Sri Lanka in May 2021. A fire aboard a container vessel led to the ship breaking apart and spilling vast amounts of plastic pellets and debris into the ocean. This event had serious implications for marine life and coastal communities, and was extensively documented, including in reports by UNEP and human rights experts.
• The X-Press Pearl disaster revealed how plastic pollution affects the marine environment at multiple levels. Plastic pellets and burnt clumps from the wreck were found not only in fish but also to have contaminated zooplankton. This indicates that microplastics and chemical pollutants are now disrupting the base of the marine food chain, making the impact of such spills even more profound and long-lasting.
• This case illustrates the urgent need for a strong and enforceable global plastic treaty. The effects of plastic pollution are no longer abstract or long-term, they are immediate, measurable, and deeply harmful across all levels of marine ecosystems. The growing scientific evidence and case studies point to a systemic crisis requiring coordinated international action.
• Infrastructural development in coastal and marine areas, including the construction of harbors and LNG ports, is accelerating. These projects are often justified in terms of economic or energy benefits but have serious environmental consequences. The expansion of maritime infrastructure significantly alters coastal and marine environments, sometimes irreversibly.
• Dredging, which involves the extraction of sand and gravel for construction or port development, has become widespread and highly disruptive. It contributes to the destruction of seabeds, alters marine habitats, and has knock-on effects for marine biodiversity and the health of ecosystems. These activities exemplify how infrastructure and development pressures are intensifying stress on ocean systems.

Links

• Environment @ 58th Session of the UN Human Rights Council
• Geneva Rights and Environment Talks

Photo Credit

Photo by Aurelien Lupu