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. Continued excessive greenhouse-gas emissions primarily from industrialised nations are - with scientific certainty - creating floods, droughts, hurricanes, sea- level rise, and seasonal unpredictability. The result is failed harvests, disappearing islands, destroyed homes, water scarcity, and deepening health crises, which are undermining millions of peoples' rights to life, security, food, water, health, shelter, and culture. Such rights violations could never truly be remedied in courts of law. Human-rights principles must be put at the heart of international climate-change policy making now, in order to stop this irreversible damage to humanity's future.