Integrating human rights in global climate governance: An introduction

Over the last decade, the world has increasingly grappled with the complex linkages emerging between efforts to combat climate change and to protect human rights around the world. As is well recognised by several international experts and bodies, climate change has a range of negative implications for the rights to life, food, health, housing, and self-determination, among others, and its consequences will be felt most acutely by groups in vulnerable situations such as Indigenous Peoples, the world’s poor, women, youth, communities located in low-lying regions, and small-island states. 1 At the same time, on-the-ground experience demonstrates that responses to climate change may themselves have negative repercussions for human rights by failing to abide by the participatory rights of marginalised peoples and communities and restricting their access to the lands, food, energy, and resources on which their livelihoods depend. 2 While the Paris Agreement adopted in December 2015 recognises the necessity for governments to “respect, promote, and consider” their human rights obligations when taking climate action, 3 important gaps remain in understanding how human rights can and should be used in practice to develop and implement effective and equitable solutions to climate change.