Capacity building on environmental law-Unep solicits Seychelles' support |28 February 2006

She was speaking to Nation after delivering a speech at a United Nations Environment Programme (Unep)-funded judicial forum on environmental laws which opened at the Berjaya Beau Vallon Bay Hotel.

Dr Rummel-Bulska said that Seychelles' keenness on conservation gives this nation a lead over many countries, and the members will be well-suited to give the necessary sensitisation to other nations.

She said that Unep is holding a series of similar fora, and that legal action is increasingly being taken against those who violate both national and international laws in different countries.

Addressing the judges, magistrates, prosecutors and lawyers, she said that she was happy to see how well the Seychelles environment is preserved.

When making the keynote address, the Minister for Environment and Natural Resources, Ronny Jumeau, said that few countries can boast that their laws for the protection of the environment date back to almost the very beginning of their existence, as do those of Seychelles.

He said that the first settlers landed here in 1770, and as early as 1778, Seychelles had seen its first laws controlling the taking of, and commercial transactions in certain protected species, including the cutting of trees for firewood.

“Our 30 years of independence which we celebrate this June have seen a cavalcade of environmental legislation that has propelled tiny Seychelles to the very forefront of the global movement to promote and protect the environment,” the minister said.

He said it was therefore but a natural progression for the Constitution of the Republic of Seychelles to enshrine a right to a safe environment for every citizen.

“Article 38 of the Constitution on the Right to a Safe Environment, as enshrined in the Seychellois Charter of Fundamental Human Rights and Freedoms, ‘recognises the right of every person to live in and enjoy a clean, healthy and ecologically balanced environment,’” he said.

He said that Article 40 follows this up by making it a fundamental duty of every Seychellois citizen “to protect, preserve and improve the environment.”

“Our constitutional protection of our environment is not just the wishful thinking of a people steeped in one of the least spoilt countries on Earth. The global environment community, through Unep, and the world’s judiciary fully agree with us on the right to a safe environment,” he said.

He said this was strongly affirmed in the Unep-sponsored Global Judges Symposium which was held in Johannesburg, South Africa, in August 2002 as a parallel event to the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), and which adopted the Johannesburg Principles on the Role of Law and Sustainable Development.

“Today’s forum, also sponsored by Unep, is a follow-up to the symposium, which was attended by our own Chief Justice Vivekanand Alleear,” the minister said.

He said that the Johannesburg Principles go to the very core of the two-day forum, and stated that “members of the judiciary, as well as those contributing to the judicial process at the national, regional and global levels, are crucial partners for promoting compliance with, and the implementation and enforcement of, international and national environmental law.”

“Chief justices and other senior judges from all over the world recognised in the Johannesburg Principles that the rapid evolution of multilateral environmental agreements, national constitutions and statutes concerning the protection of the environment increasingly requires the courts to interpret and apply new legal instruments in keeping with the principles of sustainable development,” Minister Jumeau said.

When opening the forum, Chief Justice Alleear underscored the value of the environment, being the one that provides mankind with air, water and food, and hailed the capacity building role of the forum.

Giving a hypothetical situation, he said that an oil spill in one Indian Ocean port could easily affect the marine environment in the ocean itself and into other world water bodies with catastrophic consequences.