Abstract
The scientific and policy debate on environment and human rights linkages increasingly perceives climate change as a risk multiplier and a key crosscutting issue. Recent research has shown that climate change is putting both human security and several fundamental rights at risk. Not only are the human implications of climate change serious, but also the global climate regime is not sufficiently shaped to reduce them and a large part of response mechanisms, including on domestic and regional levels, do not systematically refer to justice, equity, and human rights frameworks and, in some instances, may even exacerbate environmental damage and human rights violations. Therefore, the significant challenge currently being faced is how to ensure that human rights are widely recognized and genuinely mainstreamed in the global climate regime. A key issue is how to bring the discourses of human rights and climate change together into the climate multilateral negotiation process without importing additional burdens, setbacks or unnecessary complications. Bringing human rights into the process is also about power, ambition and resilience; further, it is about endeavoring to change the power dynamics so that the movement may be progressively propelled by vulnerable countries. This chapter intends to dissect the potential overlap, convergence, and synergies between the international human rights framework and the global climate regime. The analysis assesses the advantages of mainstreaming a rights-based approach into this regime and what should be done on the ground to effectively achieve this objective. To this end, the chapter provides many research and policy-oriented recommendations.
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Notes
- 1.
The consumption of the world’s affluent produces vastly more pollution and emission: i.e. a US resident produces over 10 times as much CO2 compared to a resident of India, and over 50 times compared to a resident of Kenya (Jodoin and Lofts 2013:1).
- 2.
The greenhouse gases rapidly accumulating in the atmosphere will remain there for centuries and even millennia – continuing to warm the planet even if all emissions ceased today.
- 3.
The global climate regime is defined here as the set of international, national and sub-national norms, institutions, and actors involved in addressing climate change.
- 4.
Seawater intrusion is the movement of seawater into fresh water aquifers due to natural processes or human activities. It is caused by decreases in groundwater levels or by rises in seawater levels.
- 5.
Adaptation actions, such as relocation in response to sea-level rise or other environmental factors, may impact the right to culture, particularly for indigenous peoples, local communities and other vulnerable groups. For example, relocation can have a particular impact on the right to culture of indigenous peoples whose cultural and spiritual practices are tied to the land, or for local communities who might lose access to significant sites such as ancestral burial grounds. For more information, refer to Jodoin and Lofts (2013).
- 6.
The NAMAs are mitigation measures proposed by developing country governments to reduce emissions below 2020 business-as-usual levels and to contribute to domestic sustainable development. It can take the form of regulations, standards, programs, policies or financial incentives. The term was coined in the Bali Action Plan of 2007, and later, in 2009 in Copenhagen, developing countries submitted NAMAs to the UNFCCC.
- 7.
According to Art. 4/2 of the Paris Agreement, each Party shall prepare, communicate and maintain successive NDC that it intends to achieve. Parties shall pursue domestic mitigation measures, with the aim of achieving the objectives of such contributions.
- 8.
The principle of ‘Additionality’ is the requirement that the greenhouse gas emissions after implementation of a CDM project activity are lower than those that would have occurred in the most plausible alternative scenario to the implementation of the CDM project activity (http://www.cdmrulebook.org/84.html)
- 9.
For example, REDD-related projects or large hydroelectric projects frequently result in the mass displacement of communities. The dispersal of such communities may negatively impact their enjoyment of the right to culture, particularly in the case of Indigenous peoples, who often have a special cultural and spiritual relationship to their land. See Jodoin and Lofts (2013).
- 10.
Germany currently has recently announced a new initiative on how to help developing countries adapt to climate change and promote renewable energy and energy efficiency.
- 11.
Climate governance is the diplomacy, mechanisms and response measures aimed at steering social systems towards preventing, mitigating or adapting to the risks posed by climate change (Jagers and Stripple 2003).
- 12.
The Art. 2 (Objective) of the UNFCCC specifies that: stabilization of GHGs in the atmosphere must be achieved within a time frame sufficient to ‘enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner’.
- 13.
Preamble, Arts. 3(4) and 4(1), UNFCCC.
- 14.
The Inuit are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Canada (Northwest Territories, Nunatsiavut, Nunavik, Nunavut, Nunatukavut), Denmark (Greenland), Russia (Siberia) and the United States (Alaska). Inuit means “the people” in the Inuktitut language.
- 15.
Press Release, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, IACHR Announces Webcast of Public Hearings of the 127th Regular Period of Sessions, No 8/07 (Feb. 26, 2007), available at http:// www.cidh.org/Comunicados/English/2007/8.07eng.htm
- 16.
See Note, Secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Promoting Effective Participation in the Convention Process, UNFCCC/SBI/2004/5 (Apr. 16, 2004) para. 39–47.
- 17.
Malé Declaration on the Human Dimension of Global Climate Change (Nov. 14, 2007), available at http://www.meew.gov.mv/downloads/download.php?f=32
- 18.
United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Human Rights and Climate Change, Resolution 7/23 (Mar. 28, 2008), available at http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/E/HRC/resolutions/A_HRC_RES_7_23.pdf
- 19.
United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Report on the Relationship Between Climate Change and Human Rights, U.N. Doc. A/HRC/10/61 (Jan. 15, 2009).
- 20.
UNFCCC Conference of the Parties, ‘Report of the Conference of the Parties on its thirteenth session, held in Bali from 3 to 15 December 2007, Addendum, Part Two: Action taken by the Conference of the Parties at its thirteenth session’ (14 March 2008) FCCC/CP/2007/6/Add 1, 3.
- 21.
Ibid, 107.
- 22.
ALBA (Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela), formally the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (Spanish: Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América), is an intergovernmental organization based on the idea of the social, political, and economic integration of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.
- 23.
Among the texts forwarded for further work is an overarching draft COP decision which contains several references to human rights. It ‘note[s]’ resolution 10/4 of the United Nations Human Rights Council is ‘mindful’ that “the adverse effects of climate change have a range of direct and indirect implications for the full enjoyment of human rights, including living well” and it “recognizes the right of all nations to survival”. A forwarded draft decision on reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries also contains a reference to the need to respect the knowledge and ‘rights of indigenous peoples and members of local communities’.
- 24.
UNFCCC Decision 1/CP.16 (Dec. 2010), para 8.
- 25.
UNFCCC Decision 1/CP.16 (Dec. 2010), Appendix 1.
- 26.
UNFCCC Decision 9/CP.19 (Nov. 2013).
- 27.
UN-REDD Programme, Guidelines on Free, Prior and Informed Consent (Jan. 2013); UN-REDD Programme and Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, Guidelines on Stakeholder Engagement in REDD+ Readiness with a Focus on Indigenous Peoples and Other Forest-Dependent Communities (Apr. 2012).
- 28.
Adaptation Fund, Environmental and Social Policy (Nov. 2013).
- 29.
International Finance Corporation, Environmental and Social Performance Standards (Jan. 2012).
- 30.
On 5 October 2016, the threshold for entry into force of the Paris Agreement was achieved and officially declared on 4 November 2016. The first session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA 1) took place in Marrakech, Morocco from 15–18 November 2016. This marks one of the fastest entry into force processes in the history of international treaty law. This was generally possible due to the work of an informal coalition of countries encompassing many of those most vulnerable to climate change impacts, including Small Island States, and an important number of the fifteen largest GHG emitters, both developed as well as emerging countries. Currently, 120 Parties have ratified of 197 Parties to the Convention (http://unfccc.int/paris_agreement/items/9444.php)
- 31.
The G20 members are jointly responsible for over 74% of global GHG emissions and dominate both global financial resources and investments in technological research and development.
- 32.
Decision -/CP.21, paras 134–136.
- 33.
See, for instance, UNGA Res 2398 (XXII) (1968); Preamble, Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, A/CONF 48/14/Rev. 1 (1972), reprinted in (1972) 11 ILM 1416; Hague Declaration on the Environment, 1989, reprinted in (1990) 28 ILM 1308; and UNGA Res 45/94 (1990).
- 34.
See Organization of American States, Inter-Am Commission on Human rights, ‘Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Ecuador’ (24 April 1997) OEA/Ser L /V/II 96, Doc 10, Rev. 1; Case of the Mayagna (Sumo) Indigenous Community of Awas Tingni, Judgment, (31 August 2001) Inter-Am Ct HR (Ser C) No 79, cited in Rajamani (2010).
- 35.
Bolivia had proposed that the REDD provisions operate within the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; see UNFCCC/AWGLCA/2008/16/Rev. 1 (n 25).
- 36.
See the Preambles of the UNDHR (1948) and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (1981). See also the Art. 1(1) of the Vienna Declaration and the Programme of Action (1993).
- 37.
UNFCCC/AWGLCA/2008/MISC5(n61)14.
- 38.
Outcome of the work of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention, adopted by the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC, Decision 1/CP16, (4 December 2010), preamble [Cancun LCA outcome].
- 39.
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Acknowledgement
I would like to express my sincere thanks and appreciation to Ms. Siham Marroune, a junior researcher at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Sais-Fes (Morocco), for revising and refining the language of the work.
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Behnassi, M. (2019). Mainstreaming a Rights-Based Approach in the Global Climate Regime. In: Behnassi, M., Gupta, H., Pollmann, O. (eds) Human and Environmental Security in the Era of Global Risks. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92828-9_1
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