Why is the environment important to us?

When we talk about the environment it means everything that is around us: land, water, atmosphere, places of special importance, plant and animal life that influence human life and well-being.

The environment affects us all. We all need a healthy environment to live healthy lives: clean air and water, safe living areas, sufficient and healthy foods. When the environment gets degraded, it affects us all in the long run, but poor people are the first to suffer.

We all strive for an improved quality of life - now and in future. We all want our children to have better opportunities to live healthy and happy lives. For that we need economic development, social justice and a healthy, sustainable environment.

In practice this means that:

• our daily living and working environments must be improved
• everybody must have equal access to land and natural resources
• we must use our social, cultural and natural resources in a sustainable manner
• we must promote public participation in decisions about how the environment is managed.

Two documents protect our environmental rights. These are the Constitution, and the National Environmental Management Act of 1998.

• To find out more about your basic rights and environmental rights in the constitution, click here.
• To find out more about how the National Environmental Management Act gives detail to our constitutional rights, click here.
• To see an example of how the new environmental rights may be applied, click here.
• A comprehensive address list of all environmental departments is available here.