Human and Environmental Security in the Era of Global Risks: Perspectives from Africa, Asia and the Pacific Islands (original) (raw)

Human Rights and Climate Change: Building Synergies for a Common Future

Human rights exist only on the margins of the existing international climate change regime. Undoubtedly, bringing a human rights framework to international efforts can help to solidify the ethical moorings needed to compel meaningful action to address climate change. However, while advocates of a rights-based approach to climate change agree that human rights principles should underpin global climate change policies, there are many variations in how human rights may be defined, justified, and brought to bear in the climate change arena. This chapter reviews several leading approaches and proposals for strengthening the connection between climate change and human rights. Each approach presents innovative options for marshaling human rights as both a rhetorical tool to help promote the achievement of a global climate change agreement, and also to influence the negotiation and content of a strong, effective, and equitable framework. Nevertheless, it remains a research challenge how to integrate human rights norms into an international climate change regime.

Promoting Human Rights in the Future Climate Regime

Ethics, Policy and Environment, Vol. 15, No. 3, 2012

Over the past several years, the human rights implications of climate change have become more evident. While extreme weather events and slow onset changes caused by climate change affect the exercise of human rights, the implementation of climate change policies - in relation to both mitigation and adaptation - may also lead to the infringement of the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities. Despite this recognition by the UN Human Rights Council and other bodies, the international climate change regime has failed to address these implications, recognizing only in 2010 the importance for parties to respect human rights in the implementation of the Framework Convention. The adoption of the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP), together with the reform of existing mechanisms and the operationalization of new institutions, offers several opportunities to ensure the adequate fulfillment of human rights obligations under the Convention. In this commentary, we highlight four concrete options available to the parties in the upcoming negotiations to guarantee the respect of substantial and procedural rights of all the stakeholders and to offer a redress mechanism in the case of loss and damages caused by climate change.

Restoring the Climate by Realizing Rights: The Role of the International Human Rights System

Review of European Community & International Environmental Law, 2012

In recent years human rights have begun to feature prominently as a tool to address climate change. This article explores how the institutions and tools of the human rights system are being deployed to complement the negotiations within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, close the emissions gap and hold the increase in global average temperature below 2°C or 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. It offers an explanation of how the interface between rights and climate change has helped to evolve our analysis of socio-ecological thresholds, created a strong and compelling narrative centered on climate justice, and enhanced political processes to better account for the experience of vulnerable populations. The article shows that the various Special Procedures and Universal Periodic Review of the Human Rights Council are already advancing the cause of urgent and ambitious climate action and suggests ways in which they can become more influential in a wider climate change regime complex. 4 Including paragraphs 8 and 12 of Decision 1/CP.16, n. 1 above, and subparagraphs 2(c) and (d) of Appendix I to the Decision.

Forging the Nexus of Climate Change and Human Rights

European Journal of Law and Political Science

The impact of climate change on human rights is a serious worry for the global community and is receiving more attention from both policymakers and researchers. However, information in this sector is sparse and fragmented. In an effort to highlight the difficulties facing humanity due to climatic factors, this article examines the rising emphasis given to human rights principles. It examines the linkages between human rights and legal responses to climate change and argued that certain connections exist between the two. The extent to which the international system sufficiently safeguards the human rights of those who are negatively impacted by climate change is examined. In conclusion, it makes suggestions for enhancing the protection of human rights in the context of climate change.

Human rights and the impacts of climate change: Revisiting the assumptions

Oñati Socio-Legal Series, 2020

The Paris Agreement acknowledges the need to tackle the permanent and irreversible impacts of climate change. It does not, however, provide means to hold state and non-state actors accountable for the harm to persons, property and the environment associated with climate change. In 2009, the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) noted that qualifying the effects of climate change as human rights violations posed a series of technical obstacles. More than a decade later, applicants around the world increasingly rely on human rights law and institutions to complain about harms associated with the impacts of climate change. National, regional and international human rights bodies stand on the frontline to bridge the accountability gap left by the Paris Agreement. This article therefore revisits the OHCHR’s assumptions, suggesting that we use human rights as an interim “gap-filler”, while we seek better tools to tackle the impacts of climate change.

Climate Justice and Human Rights, in a World in Climate Emergency

Global Campus Policy Briefs, 2021

Dr. Zoi Aliozi, Global Campus of Human Rights, 2021. Abstract Climate justice is the blueprint for a fair and sustainable future of life on this planet. Climate justice can be understood as a lens for looking at climate change as a social, ethical and legal issue, rather than solely an environmental one. This frame of justice has in its core the protection of human rights and of the most vulnerable in a climate changed world. Climate justice should be seen as a flexible umbrella that is about ensuring that the process of implementing policies to tackle the anthropogenic harms of climate change is mirroring the rule of law and is developed on a rights-based approach. It is a matter of global justice with duties spreading from the international to the regional and national stakeholders. If the United Nations (UN) fails to promote climate justice, then we collectively fail to protect human rights and negligently violate the rights of future generations. This policy brief outlines the linkages of human rights and climate change, by advocating for climate justice. Climate change is undermining the fulfilment of internationally protected human rights, like the rights to health and life; the rights to food, water, shelter and property; rights associated with livelihood and culture; and with migration and resettlement. The worst effects of climate change are principally felt by those whose rights protections are already insufficient. The main message of this brief is intended to raise awareness about the climate emergency that our world is under, and to extend an urgent call for immediate climate action addressed to all stakeholders in the European Union (EU) and UN levels, including politicians, law and policy makers as well as to civil society. After three decades of negotiating about the reach and power of climate laws and policies, we have reached a point that the negative effects of climate change are directly harming human rights on a large scale. We need a global response with strong laws mirroring and integrating the human rights project in this process. This brief aims to expose the political negligence of power holders in mitigating the negative effects of climate change on our planet, human rights and humankind’s existence. Climate change is not only linked with the obvious human rights, like the right to a healthy environment or right to life; but climate change has become synonymous for climate emergency, and if this emergency is not mitigated by climate justice it will turn into the end of human rights. It is not rocket science to understand that in a world without a healthy environment, drinkable water and clean oxygen, no right to life or any human right can be truly enjoyed. Keywords climatic changes, human rights, justice, environmental law Citation Aliozi, Z. (2021). Climate Justice and Human Rights, in a World in Climate Emergency, Global Campus of Human Rights. https://doi.org/10.25330/1232 URI http://dx.doi.org/10.25330/1232 https://repository.gchumanrights.org/handle/20.500.11825/2340

The Role of International Human Rights Law in Fights Against Climate Change

Jurnal Media Hukum, 2021

This paper aims to examine the current international legal framework that addresses climate change and identify the role of international human rights law in climate change issues. This paper began by identifying the international legal basis, the development of international legal regimes, and looking at the character and nature of these frameworks. Furthermore, this study seeks to identify the role of international human rights law to close the gap left by the climate change framework. This normative legal research examined secondary data from relevant books, journals, and published documents. There were several findings from this research. First, the current international climate change framework is insufficient to address climate change problems and their adverse impact. Second, international human rights law may play a significant role in closing the current climate change framework gap. International human rights law will add distinctive value to the current system, perform th...

CLIMATE JUSTICE: CLIMATE CHANGE AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Denialism and Human Rights, 2019

Book chapter: Author of Chapter: ‘Climate Justice: Climate Change and Human Rights, in book: “Denialism and Human Rights”, by Roland Moerland, Hans Nelen (Eds), Cambridge University Press, 2017. ABSTRACT: The inadequate commitment of academia to Climate Change research, and the neglected, under-developed state of Climate Justice, must be addressed and counter-acted. The following paper aspires to pay a small contribution to that specific cause. This essay is based on the fact that Climate Change is undermining the fulfillment of internationally protected Human Rights, like the rights to health and life; the right to food, water, shelter, property; rights associated with livelihood and culture; with migration and resettlement; and with personal security in the event of conflict. The worst effects of Climate Change are principally felt by those whose rights protections are already insufficient. In this essay, I highlight these risks and advocate their consideration. Additionally I ask questions such as: What are the Human Rights repercussions of Climate Change, and how does the extensive organisation of international Human Rights law and knowledge, convey that phenomenon? Where does international Human Rights law overlap with or provoke duties under the embryonic Climate Justice regime? Where should Climate Change strategies challenge Human Rights essentials? My ambition is to clarify the confusion covering this area of study, and by examining the relationship between Climate Change and Human Rights, an attempt is made to discover, examine, and analyse their most essential links.