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Climate Change and Human Rights: A Rough Guide

Author: International Council on Human Rights Policy
Date: 2008
Size: 127 pages (620 KB)

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Summary

How can human rights principles help to focus climate change policymaking? This report from the International Council on Human Rights Policy discusses the human rights impacts of climate change and maps research agendas. It includes Forewords by Mary Robinson and Romina Picolotti. Climate change responses can be made more effective if policymakers include human rights thresholds (minimum acceptable levels of protection) when assessing future impacts of climate change and of adaptation and mitigation strategies.

Collective action is urgently needed to address the justice and distribution issues raised by climate change. These issues are not adequately covered by the current human rights framework. Human rights imperatives can help to generate new solutions by: focusing policy on the human suffering caused by climate change and the particular vulnerability of those with weak rights protection; providing a shared legal language for consensus-building; and highlighting the moral link between local causes and distant effects.

Human rights analysis is needed to help formulate the research agendas that will inform policy options, and to assess the human rights effects of policies currently being considered. The report also finds that:

• Litigation is needed to address policy failures, but primarily directs attention to the need for more effective prevention and harm-minimisation policies.
• Procedural rights to information and participation could be used to provide more assistance and inclusion for poor nations in climate change policymaking. Parties to the 1998 Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters are obliged to promote these principles in international negotiations, for example.
• The state is responsible for fulfilling the human rights of its citizens. States can tackle threats to human rights originating externally through climate change by defending their 'right to development' in international negotiations.
• Wealthy countries are responsible for the rapid delivery of adaptation solutions and technology transfer abroad as well as for emissions reduction at home. They must also regulate international companies effectively to ensure that businesses help to facilitate alternative development paths for poor nations.

Human rights thresholds can be used to inform both adaptation policies (by assessing risks to basic social rights and existing capacity for addressing those risks) and mitigation policies. In relation to global and local mitigation policies such as fuel substitution, factors to consider include: the potential clash between a strategy's human rights and environmental impacts; the local context, as the resource redistribution involved in some policies may have negative effects; and the long-term effects of global schemes such as emissions trading, which may involve significant transfers of development potential (including usage rights to the atmosphere) into private hands. Further recommendations are that:

• Narrow decision-making processes related to climate change (such as when decisions are made via the World Bank) should be reviewed for adherence to procedural rights to information and participation.
• Accurate baseline data is required for effective climate change policymaking and poor states need help in compiling this.
• Rich countries must ensure: that companies do not just move their emissions burdens to poor countries to escape caps; that private international companies do not avoid their responsibilities to developing countries by exploiting the differential treatment of public entities; and that the human rights issues of companies' control over or reliance on increasingly scarce natural resources are addressed.

Access full text: available online

Source: International Council on Human Rights Policy, 2008, 'Climate Change and Human Rights: A Rough Guide', International Council on Human Rights Policy, Geneva
Author: Stephen Humphreys , humphreys@ichrp.org