New climate change study promotes rights basis
April 2009: Measures to address climate change should be informed and strengthened by international human rights standards and principles, a new study by the OHCHR has found.
Measures to address climate change should be informed and strengthened by international human rights standards and principles, an analytical study by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has found.
The OHCHR study, considered by the Human Rights Council during its recent session in March, will be made available to the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference, to be held Copenhagen in December.
“Climate change is one of the most serious challenges mankind has ever faced and has serious implications for the realization of human rights,” High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said in the Climate Thinkers Blog, an online discussion forum hosted by the Copenhagen Conference.
“A human rights analysis brings into focus how lives of individuals and communities are affected and why human rights safeguards must be integrated into policies and measures to address climate change,” she said.
The OHCHR study bases its premises on the findings of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which, in its Fourth Assessment Report, dispels any remaining doubts about the reality of global warming and details a range of climate change impacts.
Rights under threat
It then discusses examples of specific human rights directly under threat in the face climate change, such as the rights to life, food, water, health, housing, and self-determination.
The study also explores how specific groups including women, children and indigenous peoples are particularly vulnerable to the detrimental consequences of climate change.
"The effects of climate change will be felt most acutely by those segments of the population who are already in vulnerable situations due to factors such as poverty, gender, age, minority status, and disability.
“The application of a human rights approach in preventing and responding to the effects of climate change serves to empower individuals and groups, who should be perceived as active agents of change and not as passive victims,” the OHCHR study says.
In particular, a human rights framework “underlines the critical importance of effective participation of individuals and communities in decision-making processes affecting their lives.”
Submissions
There is a “broad agreement that climate change has generally negative effects on the realization of human rights,” says the study, which has taken into account numerous submissions from governments, UN agencies and other intergovernmental organizations, national human rights institutions, non-governmental organizations and individual experts throughout its consultation process.
When considering the study at the current Council session, the Government of the Maldives said that it would table a resolution requesting a panel debate on the subject at the Council's next session in June.
“We look forward to working with our friends both inside and outside the Human Rights Council to explore how a rights–based approach to climate change can best contribute to moving the world from a stance of inaction to one premised on the universality and inviolability of the rights and freedoms with which we are all endowed,” the Government of the Maldives said in its submission.
Addressing the disproportionate impact on already vulnerable people and communities was a key theme of the submission provided by the Australian Human Rights Commission.
“States have a positive obligation to protect individuals against the threat posed to human rights by climate change, regardless of the causes,” said the Commission
“The most effective means of facilitating this is to adopt a ‘human rights-based approach’ to policy and legislative responses to climate change; an approach that is normatively based on international human rights standards and that is practically directed to promoting and protecting human rights.”
The Asia Pacific Forum also contributed the Background Paper (2007) and Final Report (2008) of the Advisory Council of Jurists on ‘Human Rights and the Environment’.
In the Final Report, the regional group of legal experts recommended that a comprehensive international framework be established to promote a right to a healthy environment and that national governments review existing laws and policies to recognise and guarantee a right to a healthy environment as a human right.
Conclusions
The OHCHR study underlines that governments have specific obligations under international human rights law to protect individuals whose rights are affected either by the physical impacts of climate change, such as sea-level rise and extreme weather events, or by policies and measures to address climate change.
It emphasises that climate change, as a truly global problem, can only be effectively addressed through international cooperation. Such cooperation is particularly critical because of the way climate change disproportionately affects poorer countries with the weakest capacity to protect their populations.
The study concludes that “human rights standards and principles should inform and strengthen policy-making in the area of climate change, promoting policy coherence and sustainable outcomes,” and that the realisation of human rights remains a central objective of national and international action to address climate change.
