Climate Wrongs and Human Rights: Putting People at the Heart of Climate-change Policy

Abstract

In failing to tackle climate change with urgency, rich countries are effectively violating the human rights of millions of the world’s poorest people. Excessive greenhouse-gas emissions are – with scientific certainty – leading to floods, droughts, hurricanes, sea-level rise, and seasonal unpredictability. These impacts are undermining millions of people’s rights to life, security, food, water, health, shelter and culture. Such human-rights violations could never truly be remedied in courts of law. Human-rights principles must be put at the heart of international climatechange policy making now, in order to stop this irreversible damage to humanity’s future.