?limate ?hange and Human Rights Essay Example

decisions. Human rights can create the political climate necessary for legal decision makers to reinterpret domestic law to meet challenges created by climate change.

New legal arenas allow citizens to assert their rights in a manner that can reframe the problem of climate change and raise arguments and considerations not possible in the present legal context. Policy makers can rethink their mission and an empowered citizenry can raise new questions. These two advantages can create a new relationship between regulators and the citizenry they serve. This makes possible a rethinking of the established social order. Climate change is a problem that challenges all of human society. Further, it stretches legal and political institutions beyond present boundaries. Human rights are one of the few legal theories capable of taming some of the institutional challenges posed by climate change (Bratspies, 2018).

Lanyi (2012) asks what human rights have to do with climate change. According to the author, human rights and climate change are quite closely related. The impacts of climate change are both direct and indirect. Many economic, social, and cultural rights are impacted by climate change. Civil and political rights can also be impacted by climate change.

It is arguable that the impact of climate change on rights can be felt directly from extreme weather events that are caused by climate change. Extreme weather events can adversely affect food security. Climate change can also result in indirect impacts on human life through deterioration in health, declining access to safe drinking water, increased susceptibility to diseases, and several other consequences. The United Nations Development Program ('UNDP') has argued that mass environmental displacement, loss of livelihoods, rising hunger and water shortages

can potentially contribute to national, regional and global security threats.

A 2003 study conducted jointly by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that global warming may already have caused more than 160,000 deaths per year through malaria and malnutrition (a number which may double by 2020).

According to the International Institute for Environment and Development, climate change will affect the intensity of many types of vector borne diseases, water borne diseases; and respiratory diseases, especially among older age groups and urban poor populations. The existing legal framework protects few of the human rights important to the environment and climate change. Accordingly, climate change has the potential to worsen existing threats to human rights. This increases vulnerability to poverty and social deprivation (Lanyi, 2012).

According to Horn & Freeland (2009) human rights and climate change are inextricably linked. They are dependent upon the international cooperation of states and are part of the domain of common concern. Consequently, the protection of human rights and of the climate depends upon multilateral action by the international community. This is particularly true in circumstances where human rights are violated because of the adverse impacts of climate change. Many state governments have concentrated on the economic and security aspects of climate change, without sufficient regard for the social and human rights implications. It is clear that the effects of climate change are impacting the lives of many people.

Even though there are areas of disagreement among states and the scientific community as to these precise effects of climate change and the extent to which mitigation efforts are initiated. However, all agree that some form of legal

regulation is necessary. It is accordingly necessary to incorporate human rights considerations into current negotiations. The lack of specific attention paid to the issue thus far make this an international imperative. The consequences of not acting in a comprehensive and appropriate way are potentially catastrophic (Horn & Freeland, 2009).

Von Doudda, Corkery & Chartres (2007) assert that climate change is one of the most urgent human rights challenges facing the global community. However, government responses to climate change have tended to consider it an ecological problem or, more recently, an economic issue. Consequently, the social and human rights implications of climate change rarely appear in policy debates addressing climate change. Nevertheless human costs associated with climate change directly threaten fundamental human rights. These include the rights to life, food, and a place to live and work. These are rights that governments have an obligation to protect.

Equity issues also arise in the climate change context because of its disproportionate impact on already vulnerable people and communities. The modern human rights discourse requires a lot from governments when developing appropriate responses to the impacts of climate change. The most effective means of facilitating this is by adopting human rights based approaches to policy and legislative responses to climate change. This approach is normative/y based on international human rights standards directed to promoting and protecting human rights.

Some commentators have criticized attempts to establish a connection between climate change and human rights. Others argue that using human rights language to describe broader social issues confuses and devalues the existing human rights framework. While it is important to maintain the integrity and credibility of traditional standards, these must be understood in

a manner that can respond to the emergence of new threats to human dignity and well-being.

It is clear is that international standards and norms that human rights establish provide guidance to decision makers on legislative and policy responses related to climate change. The fundamental concept underpinning these international instruments will be of particular importance in developing responses to climate change.

Accordingly, whether particular climate change responses relate to local communities or to funding for adaptation measure overseas, a human rights based approach to policy development should be adopted (Von Doudda, Corkery & Chartres, 2007).

PEEL Cases that urge courts to address climate change on human rights grounds are not entirely a new phenomenon. However, success in rights based climate change claims has been erratic. The majority of lawsuits in countries with the most extensive climate change litigation have involved statutory law cases. Most allege that governments have failed to take climate change considerations into account in their decision making processes. However, climate change lawsuits based on claims of human rights violations represent a turn away from the more conventional modes of litigation. These coincide with the increasing prominence of international human rights climate change linkages.

A succession of weather related disasters around the world have highlighted the cost of climate change in human terms. In developed countries, these events cause extensive property and infrastructure damage, injury, and loss of life. The death toll from extreme weather disasters is often greater in developing countries, where severe weather events may also destroy housing, threaten food supplies, and access to clean water, and deprive people of their livelihoods. Weather related disasters have obvious implications for the realization of fundamental human rights.

Growing

recognition of the ways in which climate change implicates human rights has been significant not only as a driver of greater integration in these previously separate international agendas. It also provides a tangible legal framework for analyzing state actions that lead to climate change.

Looking at climate change in terms of human rights right can aid in framing proactive strategies to preempt human harm and responses to climate change-related disasters. The implications of climate change for the realization of human rights are obvious. A more difficult issue is whether the effects of climate change on human rights provide evidence of an actionable rights violation (Peel & Osofsky, 2018).

Knox (2009) relates that in January 2009, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) became the first international human rights body to examine the relationship between climate change and human rights. The ensuing report reaches several important conclusions. First, climate change threatens the enjoyment of a broad array of human rights. Second, climate change does not necessarily violate human rights. Third, human rights law places duties on states concerning climate change. Finally, those duties include an obligation of international cooperation. The report is of major importance important because it influences subsequent consideration of the issue by other human rights bodies.

The above mentioned report describes ways that climate change threatens the enjoyment of a wide variety of human rights, including rights to life, health, and self-determination. It does not conclude that climate change violates human rights. A violation of human rights is commonly understood to imply a breach of a legal duty under human rights law. Not all adverse effects on human rights necessarily imply such

a breach. The report's conclusion that climate change does not violate human rights may be challenged. However, it is understandable that the OHCHR sought to avoid obstacles to concluding that countries violate human rights law merely by emitting greenhouse gases (Knox, 2009).

More importantly, the report explains that whether or not climate change violates human rights law, it places duties on states that are relevant to climate change. The greatest shortcoming of the OHCHR report, according to Knox (2009) is that it says very little about the content of states' duties concerning climate change. However, the report makes it clear that those duties are not limited territorially. States have an international duty to cooperate in order to protect human rights. This duty is especially important with respect to climate change, which, according to the author, is an inherently global threat to human rights.

Bratspies (2018), Lanyi (2012), Horn & Freeland (2009), Von Doudda, Corkery & Chartres (2007), (Peel & Osofsky (2018), and Knox (2009) have made convincing arguments that there is a definite linkage between climate change, human rights, and international law. The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) became the first international human rights body to examine the relationship between climate change and human rights in 2009, which makes the issue relatively new at the international organizational level. Additionally, the fact that the problem has received international attention does not mean that there is a clear path for instituting international law that will alleviate the problem associated with the relationship between climate change, human rights, and international law in the foreseeable future. Many issues remain to be resolved and many problems will

require much time and effort to be overcome.

Tully (2008) asserts that reframing climate change impacts in human rights terms usefully emphasizes individual based considerations. Further, this approach complements other strategies. A human rights orientation will affirm the primary responsibilities of those states with territorial or jurisdictional control over affected individuals without enhancing the environmental obligations of other states.

Such an approach only indirectly reduces carbon emissions. Additionally, it cannot ensure environmental stewardship. Further challenges, including identifying violations, perpetrators, and appropriate remedies should provoke further thought on the part of human rights advocates. Financial compensation is unlikely whereas relocation relinquishes certain substantive rights, emphasizes others, and can impair their full enjoyment. Resettlement is not a just solution from the perspective of human rights and nation states, but may be an inevitable one (Tully, 2008).