Your Rights & Responsibilities
Your Rights and Responsibilities – What are your Rights?
A healthy environment is both a Right and a Responsibility of every Sri Lankan – it includes You!
The Constitution establishes as a basic principle ‘that the State shall protect, preserve and improve the environment for the benefit of the community’ and It also sets out that the duty of every person is to protect nature and conserve its riches.
This means that both your Rights and Responsibilities are set out very clearly in the Constitution.
How does the law work?
The Sri Lankan law deals with every aspects of your daily life – it is done in 3 different ways
- It sets out how people should behave according to the interest of the public
- It sets out procedure to penalise bad behaviour and recover costs/ losses for damage caused
- It says that every citizen has an equal right to a healthy environment and every one should benefit fairly and sustainably from environmental goods and services
You can expect the Police and the Court system in Sri Lanka to help you/ others if there is any infringement of the basic laws
What are your responsibilities?
The responsibility to uphold the law does not rest solely with the Government
It is Your duty to know the basic laws that guide your daily life
First You must not break the law – then make others follow
If you ignore someone breaking the law – you are equally responsible although you did not participate in it
E.g. If an industry in your area is releasing its waste water without refining it , and if you choose to ignore it, you are as responsible as the culprit
What you should do
As an individual – take action to prevent others from harming the environment, report abuses to the Police. It is your duty.
As a group – Organise and mobilize others to take actions against environmental pollution – establish clubs, organise school quizzes, complain to the police, make a case in the Courts, go for mediation, report polluting activities to the Central Environmental Authority/ Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources. (Instructions in BE ACTIVE)
Inform the Environmental Foundation, who will show you the correct way to deal with matters of environmental pollution either through the Courts/ mediation etc.
Remember what you do will affect others and what others do will affect you – the environment is not a single element – it is everything around you
Use your Rights and Responsibilities to create a sustainable tomorrow for every one
