The human cost of climate change
Following discussions at the recent APF Annual Meeting, Australia’s Human Rights Commission has published a paper to draw attention to the serious human rights challenges posed by climate change.
A follow-up activity from the APF’s 12th Annual Meeting, held in Sydney last September, the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) has recently published a background paper which highlights the major human rights challenges posed by climate change.
Human Rights and Climate Change argues that governments have traditionally responded to climate change as an environmental problem and, more recently, as an economic one.
However, the social and human rights implications of climate change, including the potential for large-scale displacement of people, have received far less attention to date.
HREOC’s paper makes the point that the human cost of climate change will be felt most severely in the Asia Pacific region.
It draws on the findings of the most recent report from the Working Group on Climate Change and Development, Up in Smoke? Asia and the Pacific, released in November 2007, which says that ‘the human drama of climate change will largely be played out in Asia, where over 60 per cent of the world’s population live’.
Climate change will also have a disproportionate impact on already vulnerable people and communities. The United Nations estimates that by 2020 almost 50 million extra people will be at risk of hunger and rising sea levels will threaten the future of many island and coastal communities across the region.
HREOC has distributed its paper to a range of stakeholders, including government agencies, policy makers, legal practitioners, academics and journalists, to raise awareness of the issues and highlight the important human rights principles that should be considered in any policy and legislative responses.
Part I of the paper considers the human rights implications of climate change, including the right to environment of a particular quality; the right to life, adequate food, water and health; the rights of Indigenous peoples; and human security.
Part II looks at the obligations imposed on Australia, in both international and domestic law, to respond to these threats. Part III outlines how Australia can best fulfill these obligations and argues that a human rights-based approach is the most effective way to respond to climate change.
Find out more
Human Rights and Climate Change is available in HTML, Word and
PDF format on the HREOC website.
The final report of the Advisory Council of Jurists on the Right to Environment
will be published on the APF website shortly.
