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The Role of Environmental Human Rights in Addressing Climate Change

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Environmental Human Rights and Climate Change

Abstract

The threat of widespread, potentially catastrophic environmental changes as a consequence of anthropogenic global warming represents a challenge for the international community of a magnitude not previously encountered by modern international law and institutions. Climate change threatens not only environmental systems, but also the human communities which depend on them. The broad range of environmental impacts generate an equally wide range of human impacts, and will interfere with the realisation of many human rights. It is therefore appropriate to ask what role environmental human rights can and should have in addressing the many challenges of climate change. This chapter begins this examination by providing an overview of the emergence of human rights-based approaches to climate change, illustrating some of the tensions surrounding the employment of human rights in such a context. This lays a foundation for further analysis in Chaps. 8 and 9, which will identify a number of limitations to a human rights-based approach to climate change, and consider whether these could be overcome through the adoption of a standalone environmental right.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Knox’s work mapping and interpreting human rights obligations in relation to the environment was discussed in Chap. 4.

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  1. Faculty of Law, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Bridget Lewis

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Lewis, B. (2018). The Role of Environmental Human Rights in Addressing Climate Change. In: Environmental Human Rights and Climate Change. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1960-0_7

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