Human wellbeing is connected to nature for food, climate regulation and culture, making the protection of nature a human rights matter.

Added to that, recent developments in international human rights law highlight that governments need to consider human-nature connections when making decisions that may affect the environment.

In a commentary published in npj Ocean Sustainability, an interdisciplinary group of researchers – including experts in ecosystem services, environmental governance, deep-sea ecology, and law – underscore that these developments should prompt a rethink of how any environmental decisions that hold the potential to impact biodiversity are made.

They argue this rethink should centre around assessments of foreseeable harm, and that any ability to foresee harms to human wellbeing is sufficient to prompt precautionary action to avert it.

Doing this would mark a significant evolution of current environmental decision-making which, they say, is presently “constrained by a perceived need for quantified certainty in impact assessment”.

Critically, the authors outline that human rights law shows that available evidence should be integrated into decision-making, even when considered uncertain.

Considering this, they have called for all environmental decisions globally to take account of key scientific and ecological evidence – including the knowledge and cultures held by local communities – and new ecosystem system service risk-based research methods that can provide an assessment of precaution, when they are making environmental decisions.

This, the researchers say, will ensure that the ecosystems vital for human wellbeing across the planet are appropriately accounted for in decision making.

The article was authored by researchers from the University of Plymouth and the University of Strathclyde, working as part of the One Ocean Hub – an international programme aiming to support fair and inclusive decision-making for a healthy ocean for people and planet.