The Climate Change Dimension of Human Rights Obligations

Abstract

Under international and regional human rights treaties, state parties have the obligation to secure to everyone within their jurisdiction certain human rights and freedoms. This article focusses on the climate dimension of such human rights obligations. It analyses the substantive content of human rights obligations in a climate change context and presents the argument that in order not to violate the positive obligation to secure human rights from the threats of climate change impacts, states must take all adequate and appropriate measures at the level of their highest possible ambition to hold temperature increases to well below 2oC above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to hold them to 1.5oC. Achieving this temperature goal necessitates a global phase-out of greenhouse gas emissions by around 2050. This, in turn, requires of each state to have a comprehensive regulatory, administrative and institutional framework in place to pursue this end, and to ensure its effective implementation, compliance and enforcement. This article is divided in four parts. It will briefly explain the factual linkages between climate change impacts and human systems, before, third, discussing climate change as a matter of human rights law. The substantive (climate) content of human rights obligations, especially under articles 2 and 8 ECHR, is analysed in part four.