Green Amendments and the Right to Food
Mutually Reinforcing Protections
Photo courtesy of the National Right to Food Community of Practice
A wave of legislative activity is spreading across the United States, aiming to protect the conditions that will allow us to live healthy lives with dignity, now and in the future. Efforts to embed new rights in state constitutions face difficult and extended journeys, yet more and more state legislators and local advocates are adopting constitutional amendments as a strategy to effect meaningful change.
The campaigns to protect the right to food and the right to a clean and healthy environment in state constitutions are complementary and mutually reinforcing. Both can—and should—be considered as important contributions to the efforts to protect wildlands, woodlands, and farmlands so that all communities can thrive.
Legislative Momentum
In 2024, nine states introduced legislation to adopt Green Amendments. These amendments seek to codify the right to a clean and healthy environment and generally include language to protect the right to pure water, clean air, and a stable climate. In 2021, New York joined Montana and Pennsylvania as the third state to adopt this fundamental right in its constitution. As these amendments begin to take hold, interest and energy is expanding around the country with 20 additional states listed as having active campaigns affiliated within the “Green Amendment: For the Generations” coalition.
Alongside this, a similar movement is working to extend constitutional protections for our collective right to food. Maine became the first state to pass a Right to Food Amendment in 2021, recognizing that:
All individuals have a natural, inherent and unalienable right to food, including the right to save and exchange seeds and the right to grow, raise, harvest, produce and consume the food of their own choosing for their own nourishment, sustenance, bodily health and well being, as long as an individual does not commit trespassing, theft, poaching or other abuses of private property rights, public lands or natural resources in the harvesting, production or acquisition of food.
The right to food is an established part of international law, which recognizes that without reliable access to adequate food and nutrition, at all stages of our lives, we are not free to live in dignity or equality, or to participate fully in public life. The human rights system considers these principles as essential, and part of the foundation of “freedom, justice and peace in the world.”
“It is not possible to fully realize the right to food in a place without a clean and healthy environment; and our environment will be healthier if the food system is designed to respect our right to food.”
The United States remains one of only a few countries in the world that has refused to ratify the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the primary legal instrument setting out the terms of the right to food. Though this limits our legal obligations to uphold the right to food as most other countries in the world do, it does not stop us from making progress at local and state levels. Advocates in at least five states have been working to advance their own constitutional protections for the right to food.
Considering the recent challenges to the federal regulatory paradigm (see Supreme Court Overturns Chevron Doctrine in Issue #4) and the overarching need to make more progress, more quickly, in the effort to mitigate the worst impacts of our changing climate, there is real value in creating legal frameworks at the state level to protect the integrity of our ecosystems and food systems alike.
Mutually Reinforcing Rights?
The constitutional protections for the right to food and the right to a clean and healthy environment should be mutually reinforcing, both in the text of these amendments and in the strategies supporting their implementation. It is not possible to fully realize the right to food in a place without a clean and healthy environment; and our environment will be healthier if the food system is designed to respect our right to food.
Some might consider these rights to be in competition with each other. The current food system was developed within the “food as commodity” narrative, seeking to feed the world by any means possible. The result is a food system based on extractive and exploitative practices that are responsible for at least a third of greenhouse gas emissions, and that fail to eradicate hunger and food insecurity.
“All individuals have a natural, inherent and unalienable right to food”
Even a more conscientious approach to promoting access to food, if not implemented carefully, could put pressure on the soil, air, and water of a region. If New England is to meet a goal of 30 percent regional food reliance by 2030, it is argued that we would need to bring more land into use for food production and convert some active farmland into more intensive production. Without strong environmental protections in place, there is a potential risk of prioritizing farmland and food production over conserving wildlands or encouraging ecological management of working forests.
Yet, the right to food explicitly recognizes the needs of “present and future generations,” as does the right to a healthy environment. For us to enjoy the right to “grow, raise, harvest, produce and consume the food of our own choosing,” we must have access to healthy soil, air, and water—now and in the future. The right to food does not guarantee the right to grow and produce food without consideration for a stable climate or a healthy environment. Indeed, these are necessary prerequisites for future enjoyment of all human rights.
An Important Part of a Wider Strategy
Rights-based amendments have enormous transformative potential to bring about the change we want to see, but it is important to recognize that this is only one part of a strategy to promote a food system that helps us all thrive, now and in the future.
One critique of these rights-based approaches is that the concept of human rights was developed with human beings at the center, primarily focused on the relationships between people and their governments. Not only does this framing prioritize the needs and experiences of one species over all others, it is also based on a worldview that believes people can be extracted from and survive without their environment and healthy ecosystems. This framework has separated the rights of people from the Rights of Nature or Mother Earth herself, which are seen by many as foundational to all life on Earth. There is work still to be done to reconcile these movements and find opportunities to work together.
Additionally, legal protections are only as strong as their implementation. There may be lessons for the right to food movement in how courts have interpreted existing green amendments in Pennsylvania and Montana, but it is too early to tell. Using court cases to hold states accountable for new obligations is one critically important strategy, but the transformative value of a human rights approach goes well beyond what can be influenced through legal action. Much more work will be needed to build the capacity of advocates and policy makers at all levels to implement these rights in practice.
Next Steps
Constitutional protections of the right to food and a clean and healthy environment are still relatively new and untested. Time will tell whether embedding fundamental rights in state constitutions is sufficient to make meaningful changes in our communities, and advocates in these states must continue working at all levels of government to support their implementation.
“For us to enjoy the right to “grow, raise, harvest, produce and consume the food of our own choosing,” we must have access to healthy soil, air, and water—now and in the future.”
As more and more states explore opportunities to adopt rights-based amendments, now is the time to align our movements to build collective power and to maximize impact. The National Right to Food Community of Practice is a group of community activists, farmers and food producers, public servants, legal and public policy experts, academics, and others working to advance the right to food at all levels across the United States. We welcome members who want to be involved in transforming the food system so that people and the planet can thrive together.
Dr. Chelsea Marshall is the Director of Special Projects for the National Right to Food Community of Practice, supporting work to advance the right to food in towns, cities, and states across the United States. She has a master’s degree in human rights law and a doctoral degree in law from Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland. She previously worked as a Senior Project Officer at Nourish Scotland. Her work focuses on supporting community organizations, advocates, and policymakers to put human rights law into practice. Chelsea lives in Maine, where she grew up.