1st Edition

Human Rights Approaches to Climate Change Challenges and Opportunities

By Sumudu Atapattu Copyright 2016
    348 Pages
    by Routledge

    348 Pages
    by Routledge

    Despite the clear link between climate change and human rights with the potential for virtually all protected rights to be undermined as a result of climate change, its catastrophic impact on human beings was not really understood as a human rights issue until recently.

    This book examines the link between climate change and human rights in a comprehensive manner. It looks at human rights approaches to climate change, including the jurisprudential bases for human rights and the environment, the theoretical framework governing human rights and the environment, and the different approaches to this including benchmarks. In addition to a discussion of human rights implications of international environmental law principles in the climate change regime, the book explores how the human rights framework can be used in relation to mitigation, adaption, and adjudication. Other chapters examine how vulnerable groups –women, indigenous peoples and climate "refugees" – would be disproportionately affected by climate change. The book then goes on to discuss a new category of people created by climate change, those who will be rendered stateless as a result of states disappearing and displaced by climate change, and whether human rights law can adequately address these emerging issues.

    Part I: Legal Aspects and Human Rights Framework  Chapter 1: International Legal Framework Governing Climate Change: A Human Rights Assessment  Chapter 2: Human Rights Approaches to Environmental Protection  Chapter 3 – Climate Change and Human Rights: A Justice Issue?  Chapter 4: International Environmental Law Principles in the Climate Change Regime: A Human Rights Assessment  Chapter 5: Mitigation and Adaptation through a Human Rights Lens  Part II – Human Rights and Vulnerable Groups  Chapter 6: Climate-related Migration and "Climate Refugees"  Chapter 7: Forests, REDD and Indigenous People   Chapter 8: Women, Climate Change and Inequality   Part III – Human Rights Implications of International Legal Issues  Chapter 9: Small Island States and Their People  Chapter 10 – Extreme Weather Events, Access to Resources and Conflict: Implications for International Peace and Security   Chapter 11 – Using the Human Rights Framework to Adjudicate Climate Change  Chapter 12— Climate Change and Human Rights: Square Pegs in Round Holes?

    Biography

    Sumudu Atapattu is the Director of Research Centers and Senior Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin Law School, USA and lead counsel for human rights at the Center for International Sustainable Development Law, Montreal, Canada.