Competing claims: human rights and climate harms

Abstract

To speak of climate change and human rights in the same breath is not merely to draw a connection between the activities that generate global warming and the subsequent deterioration of many human rights. This chapter first explores four different justice demands that have informed climate change negotiations and that provide the contested ethical backdrop against which human rights concerns must be placed. It examines whether flexible provisions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), such as 'equity' and 'common but differentiated responsibilities' (CBDR) can provide a framework for addressing human rights violations attributable to climate change. The chapter discusses the prospects for legal redress for climate change-related harms, drawing on human rights experience in relation to states, on the one hand, and to private actors, on the other hand. It concludes by assessing the gaps in a global system that appears, at first sight, poorly equipped to manage the human rights implications of climate change.

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