The human rights turn in climate change litigation and responsibilities of legal professionals

Abstract

Climate change is already being felt around the world, impacting a range of human rights including ultimately the right to life. While a healthy environment is a pre-condition for the enjoyment of rights, the environment is not mentioned in the foundational human rights document – Universal Declaration of Human Rights – nor is it specifically protected in subsequent international human rights treaties. This artificial division is partially a function of the separate development of international human rights and environmental law in the last century, which today needs urgently to be bridged. Progress is slowly being made, such as the 2021 Resolution recognising the right to a healthy environment by the UN Human Rights Council and the various petitions being lodged before human rights bodies. This column discusses the (long overdue) recognition of the human rights/environment nexus and the subsequent human rights turn in climate change litigation. In light of the challenges still faced when addressing the impacts of climate change under human rights law, we engage in (self-)reflection on the professional responsibilities of judges/decision-makers, lawyers, and scholars as active participants in the development of the law as well as the struggle for climate justice. We urge these legal professionals to be aware of the power they have in shaping these developments, and discuss how their role can be performed responsibly.

Embedded Relationship Nature of Human Rights, Industrialization, Environment, Sustainable Development Goals, Constitution, Legislation, and Judiciary

“…2 ISID model is considered as a growth engine for income generation, an enabler, and a facilitator for rapid and sustained improvement and enhancement in living standards coined to offer robust technical solutions to environmentally compatible and sound industrialization, thereby enhancing and reinforcing economic growth and diversification in a socially inclusive and environmentally sound acceptable manner. 3 Even though analysis related to reinforcing nature of IHR and environment and linkage studies between SDG, IHR, and environment, literature still emphasizes studies on long-overdue recognition of IHR, ISID, and environment nexus and their litigation-related matters 4 (Wernham, 2016; Fraser and Henderson, 2022;Suresh and Sundaram, 2022). Environmental dimensions of IHR, industrial, and business law are rarely addressed in the literature, despite the increase in environmental cases in IHR and industrialization Jurisprudence.…”

Cross-embedded ralationship nature of Human Rights-related treaties and instruments with environment-related sustainable development goals

“…In the past, some attempts to link SDG and a few HR-T&I have been carried out (The Danish Institute for Human Rights, 2008;Wernham, 2016;The Danish Institute of Human Rights, 2017). The long-overdue recognition of the IHR and environment nexus and the subsequent IHR turn in the environment and climate change litigation are also highlighted in the literature (Fraser and Henderson, 2022). However, the CER nature of HR-T&I in E-SDG is rarely analysed comprehensively, or analyses are confined to SDG dealing with health or water (Scanlon, Cassar and Nemes, 2004) or right to food and nutrition (Vivero Pol and Schuftan, 2016;Aller Celia, Romero Elena and Carvajal Marta, 2018) or clean energy or related areas (Spijkers, 2020).…”

The Human Right to a Healthy Environment

“…13 While the petition before the Committee on the Rights of the Child was found inadmissible for non-exhaustion of domestic remedies, the petition by Torres Strait Islanders against Australia regarding sea level rise is still pending before the Human Rights Committee. 14 Despite its broad scope, the book does not devote dedicated space to the experience of women and/or children as marginalised groups vis-à-vis the environment. While environmental degradation and the impacts of climate change will impact everyone, women and children are disproportionately affected due to inequalities (240, 247, 262).…”