This project analyzes Super-Networks and how these can make environmental policies more sustainable – hence the name SuperSustainable. Super-Networks are new forms of transnational advocacy vehicles fostering human rights protection in environmental policies. These policies, often accompanied by changes in water and land use or infrastructural developments, can adversely impact people’s rights to health, adequate housing, food, water, or cultural rights.

SuperSustainable addresses these problems by generating new knowledge on how super-networks can bring local rights concerns to international governmental negotiations to effectively demand more sustainable policy decisions. This knowledge will empower local communities as main project beneficiaries by encouraging them to utilize super-networks to maximize their effects as rights advocacy vehicles. SuperSustainable explores how super-networks function, initiate multi-level policy feedback loops and foster interlinkages between human rights and the environment for more sustainable policy-making.

This project has comparatively analyzed three case studies: (1) the Inter-Constituency Alliance at the UNFCCC (focus on COP21 and COP26), (2) the Right to a Healthy Environment Coalition at the UN Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly and (3) the Convention on Biological Diversity Alliance at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity negotiations. Throughout this project, 30 interviews were conducted with UN Special Mandate-holders, initiators of civil society alliances, representatives of civil society from various policy fields and experts working at the grassroots level.