Ensuring Environmental Expression: An International Human Rights Law Approach to the Preservation of the Culturally Critical Environments of Indigenous Peoples

The balancing of the conflict between the modern demand for perpetual development on an individual and national level and the preservation of the environment continues to be a source of considerable academic debate. Such discourse can however fail to take into account the reality of indigenous peoples, whose development is inextricably linked to particular environments and the features which form them. The indigenous peoples and the cultures with which we identify them and indeed they base their own identities is reliant therefore upon the preservation of those environments. Reflecting this reality in practice however is fraught with difficulties, and one which jurists, politicians and sociologists alike have tried to resolve. Current approaches protect the productive capacity of environments and their ability to supports the necessities of human life, including sustenance, housing and clothing on the one hand, whilst on the other affording the right of indigenous peoples to express their culture. Existing provisions of international human rights law interpreted in a more expansive manner than that to which they have to date been subjected offers a new and more relevant basis for the protection of indigenous peoples and their cultures through the preservation of the specific environments to which they have been inextricably linked for generations. Similarly the subjective nature of the connection between individual indigenous cultures and the ecosystems in question would be accommodated within such a framework. Protection of environments critical to the continuation of indigenous cultures would be predicated upon the inextricable links with them rather than on general freedoms to express culture focused upon a narrow conception of the ability of the individual to do so. The aim being that such an approach would consequentially provide both environmental protections and ensure the fulfilment of state obligations with regards to the fundamental rights of their indigenous peoples.