The
human rights of the world’s most vulnerable will be severely threatened
unless urgent action is taken to improve access to justice and legal
frameworks for people affected by climate change, concludes a new report
by the International Bar Association (IBA) Task Force on Climate Change Justice and Human Rights.
Published today, the ground-breaking 240-page report
Achieving Justice and Human Rights in an Era of Climate Disruption
finds that, while climate change affects everyone, it
disproportionately strikes those who have contributed to it the least
and lack the resources to respond. The Report assesses the severe
challenges currently facing national and international legal regimes
which are poorly suited to provide legal remedies to those most
affected, and outlines concrete recommendations for reform to create
climate change justice structures that actively help protect and
preserve environmental and human rights.
The Report’s key recommendations include:
-
Legal recognition for a new universal human right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment;
-
Creation
of a new international dispute resolution structure for climate change
issues, including a new specialist International Court on the
Environment – and, in the interim, for States to recognise the
jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice and, in arbitrations,
the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague;
-
Greening
bilateral investment treaties and free trade agreements to include
state and investor party obligations to comply with environmental laws,
climate change commitments and to provide precedence to environmental
and climate friendly laws over conflicting trade measures;
-
The
issuing of World Trade Organisation guidelines reassuring states that
trade-related measures motivated by climate concerns will not fall foul
of WTO trading rules, and that economic subsidies be rebalanced in
favour of climate-friendly technologies and against fossil fuels;
-
Inclusion
of a cumulative carbon budget in the United Nations Climate Change
Multilateral Framework to achieve a 2°C temperature rise limit;
-
Increasing
corporate responsibility to recognise how climate change impacts on
human rights and to implement policies to achieve greater environmental
awareness and greater corporate/regulator liaison on group-wide
greenhouse gas measurement, reporting and disclosure; and
-
Using
the UN Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process to highlight climate
justice concerns for developing countries before a broad audience.
Through
the more than 50 recommendations, proposed across short, medium and
long-term timeframes, the Task Force calls on world leaders,
policymakers, lawyers, corporations, trade bodies, human rights bodies,
communities, scientists and individuals to take ‘joint, bold action’ to
achieve climate change justice. The Report’s recommendations are the
result of a comprehensive survey of domestic and international law
relevant to climate change and of the ways in which these laws and legal
systems impede or constrain the realisation of climate justice and
human rights.
Mary Robinson, UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Climate Change, comments in the Report’s Foreword,
‘With
the publication of this report I have to say that the IBA has surpassed
my expectations and delivered an excellent contribution to the
understanding of climate justice and the role of human rights law in
addressing the climate challenge. Through this Report the legal
community embraces climate justice, elucidates the links between climate
change and human rights and makes clear recommendations on ways to
secure justice for those affected by climate impacts.’
The Task Force, co-chaired by
David Estrin, Chair of the IBA’s Environment Health and Safety Law Committee, and
Baroness Helena Kennedy QC,
Co-Chair of the IBA’s Human Rights Institute, emphasises that the time
for action is now and that unless reforms are put in place, current
effects – including increased incidence of worsening droughts,
hurricanes and heatwaves – are likely to be ‘dwarfed by the future
consequences of climate change’. These include rising sea levels,
unprecedented weather disasters, depleted freshwater reserves, vanishing
ecosystems and food supplies, as well as risk of serious social
disruption, lost livelihoods, mass displacements of peoples, and loss of
cultural, family, community and language continuity.
IBA President Michael Reynolds said,
‘Existing
legal mechanisms addressing mitigation, adaptation and remediation of
climate change are failing to cope with the scale of the global issue
and its wide-ranging impact on individuals, leaving climate change
justice issues unaddressed. That climate change raises concerns of
ethics and justice is now without question.’ He added,
‘The significance of Achieving Justice and Human Rights in an Era of Climate Disruption
lies in how it assists with moving from understanding to action. The
Task Force points the way forward in translating climate justice into
effective legal justice, with a series of proposals that are guided in
scientific consensus, in the reality of international climate policy and
in the urgency of real life impacts on individuals and communities.’