Bringing Human Rights to Bear on Climate Change

Climate Law ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 165-179
Author(s):  
John H. Knox
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
The Third ◽  
Global Nature ◽  
Environmental Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Norms

This article provides a framework for considering how human rights norms have been, and may be, brought to bear on climate change. After describing how human rights norms have been applied to environmental issues generally, the article addresses the challenge of climate change, whose global nature complicates the application of environmental human rights norms. The third section summarizes the emerging human rights obligations of states with respect to climate change.

Part VII Inter-linkages with Other Regimes, Ch.45 Human Rights

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Knox John H
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Multilateral Environmental Agreements ◽  
Healthy Environment ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Human Rights Treaties ◽  
Environmental Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Norms

This chapter examines the relationship between human rights and the environment, which has developed through the adoption and interpretation of many different national constitutions and laws, human rights treaties, and multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs). The development of what might be called ‘environmental human rights law’ has occurred in three main channels. First, efforts to achieve recognition of a human right to a healthy environment, while ineffective at the UN, have achieved widespread success at the national and regional levels. Second, some multilateral environmental instruments have incorporated human rights norms, especially rights of access to information, public participation, and remedy. Third, human rights tribunals and other monitoring bodies have ‘greened’ human rights law by applying a wide range of human rights to environmental harm. The chapter explains each of these paths of development before sketching potential lines of further development through recognition of the rights of nature and of future generations.

scholarly journals Responsibilities of Multinational Corporations on Environmental Issues

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 78
Author(s):  
Mahsa Hosseini Moghaddam ◽  
Ali Zare
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Multinational Companies ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Third ◽  
Responsible Behavior ◽  
Corporate Social ◽  
A Company

Multinational corporations play more roles in social and cultural and political issues in this century. This growing trend in multinational companies, has led the international law, talk about "corporate social responsibility". One of the most important aspects of CSR is environmental issues. The question is that is there enough regulatory basis- at the local or international level- to guaranty responsible behavior of these companies. And in the cases of environmental damages which parts of a company should be responsive and compensate damages. Perhaps the assignment of responsibility in the actions against multinational companies on environmental issues is not too difficult; the reason is that losses are objective and external. Note that in many deserving cases, harm to the environmental rights is a violation of human rights, particularly the third generation of human rights.

The Paris Agreement as a Human Rights Treaty

2020 ◽  
pp. 323-347
Author(s):  
John H Knox
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Paris Agreement ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Previous Decade ◽  
International Human ◽  
Human Rights Norms

This chapter examines the Paris Agreement on climate change in light of international human rights law, with particular attention to the human rights language included in the Paris Agreement. The chapter reviews the efforts over the previous decade to characterize climate change as a threat to human rights; describes the evolution of human rights obligations relating to environmental harm in general and to climate change in particular; and assesses the new climate regime in light of these norms. It concludes that the Paris Agreement is consistent with the human rights obligations relating to climate change in many respects, but that states must strengthen their commitments in order to fulfil those obligations completely. Finally, the chapter examines how human rights norms may influence climate policy in the future.

23. The Environment

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Barry ◽  
Kerri Woods
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Development Projects ◽  
Environmental Refugees ◽  
Environmental Campaigns ◽  
Environmental Human Rights ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Rights Issues

This chapter examines the ways that environmental issues affect human rights and the relevance of human rights to environmental campaigns. It also evaluates proposals for extending human rights to cover environmental rights, rights for future generations, and rights for some non-human animals. The chapter begins with a discussion of the relationship between human rights and the environment, along with the notion that all persons have ‘environmental human rights’. It then analyses the impact of the environment on human security and its implications for human rights issues before considering case studies that illustrate how environmental issues directly impact on the human rights of the so-called environmental refugees, who are displaced from lands by the threat of climate change and also by development projects. Finally, the chapter describes the link between human rights and environmental sustainability.

scholarly journals Structural analysis of the national ombudsman activities in ensuring environmental human rights

2021 ◽  
Vol 258 ◽  
pp. 05023
Author(s):  
Mikhail Olenev
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Structural Analysis ◽  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
The State ◽  
Ecological Situation ◽  
Public Discussion ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Environmental Human Rights

In this article, the author examines the organization of the activities of the national ombudsman (Human Rights Commissioner in the Russian Federation) to ensure human rights in the field of ecology, conducts a structural analysis of the received applications from citizens on environmental issues, and also makes a number of proposals to improve the activities of the ombudsman. Based on the results of the study, the main topics of citizens’ appeals regarding violations of the rules for the environment use and abuse of environmental human rights submitted to the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation were identified. The identification of borderline points by the national ombudsman requires attention in the field of environmental protection of citizens and giving them a public discussion, allows to focus the attention of society and the state on the most problematic aspects of ensuring human rights in the field of ecology, which helps the responsible state authorities to build their work more effectively in this direction, since the state of nature, environment and the ecological situation ultimately affect the development of both individual citizens and society and the state as a whole.

Environmental Human Rights

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerri Woods
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Legal Practice ◽  
Environmental Human Rights ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Key Questions

In recent public and activist debates, threats to the sustainability of the global ecosystem, such as climate change, have increasingly been posed in terms that link the impact on human well-being to questions of rights. Environmental human rights are emerging in national and international legal practice and have been invoked by environmental political theorists seeking to explicate and justify obligations to protect and sustain the environment and to secure justice for both contemporary communities and future generations. This chapter addresses three key questions in order to unpack the concept of environmental human rights: (1) Why adopt a human rights approach? (2) How have environmental human rights been conceived? and (3) What does an account of environmental human rights entail for rights holders and duty bearers?

Broadening the Right to Environment

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Cullet
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Human Dimensions ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
The Face ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Right

This chapter investigates the interaction between individuals and states in the face of climate change. It looks into the points of intersection between climate change and human rights regimes by examining the extent to which the climate change regime has recognized and addressed the human rights dimensions of climate change. Indeed, climate change is but one of many global environmental issues and where the climate change regime is part of the corpus of international environmental law, it looks into the extent to which the debate on a right to environment can be used in the context of climate change. International environmental law includes instruments that embrace the human dimensions of environmental issues as reflected, for instance, in the definition of sustainable development adopted in the Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development at the Johannesburg World Conference on Environment and Development.

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