Which concept recognizes that access to a clean, healthy environment is a fundamental right of all humans?

• A. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
• B. Environmental Sustainability
• C. Environmental Justice
• D. Anthropocentrism

Answer: (C)

Environmental justice centers on the idea that access to a clean, healthy environment is a fundamental right for all people. It frames environmental protection and exposure to pollutants as fairness and rights issues, focusing on ensuring that no community bears an outsized burden of pollution and that everyone enjoys equal protection from environmental hazards, regardless of race, income, or location. This rights-based perspective is what makes it the best fit for recognizing a universal entitlement to a healthy environment.

In contrast, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment maps and values how ecosystems support human life through services, but it doesn’t inherently assert environmental rights for all people. Environmental Sustainability emphasizes keeping resources and ecological processes intact for future generations, balancing long-term use, but it doesn’t explicitly declare a universal human right to a clean environment. Anthropocentrism is a worldview that centers human needs and interests, which may support environmental use but does not by itself establish a rights-based claim to environmental quality.