Climate Change Through the Lens of Human Rights

Copenhagen came and went this past December without the development of a legally binding climate change agreement. Curiously, various political figures are already calling for such an agreement at the next round of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations later this year in Mexico.

If only someone had told them about the conference at Copenhagen. As negotiations on the preeminent transnational environmental problem of our time plod ahead, it is evident that the process has lacked the urgency befitting the human rights implications of climate change.

Climate change has a dramatic impact on agriculture, public health, coastal communities, and local ecosystems. The rights to life, water, health, sustenance and culture of many individuals and communities are already in danger. Moreover, climate change will almost certainly disproportionately burden those who are often socially and politically disadvantaged such as the poor, children, women, disabled persons and indigenous communities.

Yes, the connection between the environment and human rights is not a novel idea.

The 1972 Stockholm Declaration, a non-binding multilateral agreement concerning the environment and development, explicitly recognized that environmental conditions have a direct impact on the enjoyment of human rights. Many of these rights are laid out in the core UN Human Rights Treaties. Additionally, multiple regional human rights agreements, such as the African Charter and the first Additional Protocol to the American Convention, have put two and two together by explicitly recognizing the right to a healthy environment. By implication and through explicit recognition, environmental concerns have seeped into human rights discourse.

Unfortunately, human rights considerations have been somewhat muted in the two most prominent multilateral environmental legal regimes of the past 25 years. Neither the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer nor the UNFCCC seriously address the human rights dimensions of their respective problems. Instead, they make brief overtures to general health and welfare. On the other hand, concerns over development permeate both agreements. While the UN Human Rights Council adopted two resolutions recognizing the links between climate change and existing human rights commitments in March 2009, the inconsistent progress of subsequent negotiations has demonstrated that many powerful stakeholders have failed to take heed.

The Copenhagen Accord’s emphasis on adaptation and mitigation strategies serves as an example. While it recognizes the need to limit the rise of global temperatures and commits significant sums of money to help poor countries deal with the repercussions, it fails to impose legally binding carbon-emissions reductions. Adaptation and mitigation measures can only diminish the rights deprivations inherent in climate change. Meaningful emissions reductions would directly address the root of the problem.

From a human rights perspective, the injustice is clear: instead of imposing restrictions on carbon emissions, people are made to mitigate and adapt to the erosion of their rights.

Photo credit: IRRI Images