A JOURNAL ARTICLE REVIEW OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND HUMAN RIGHTS:

AN INTRODUCTION TO LEGAL ISSUES

by Dennis Aran T. Abril

JD-II 405

The article, Climate Change and Human Rights: An Introduction to Legal Issues,
purportedly tries to set the nexus between climate change and human rights. Its author Siobhan
McInerney-Lankford of the Harvard University accordingly comes up with a framework
necessary for the validation of the connection between the two entities, that different questions
must be disaggregated since both areas have evolved separately. Following the structure of his
discussion, this review will be detailing the concurrences or dissents on his main points, as the
case may deem necessary.
Basing on that framework to link the connection between climate change and human
rights, through conceptual questions, we could find the link between the two by structuring out
first the denominations of each concept.
He predominantly points out that the worst effects of climate change are likely to be felt
by individuals whose rights are already precarious. Moreover, the impacts of climate change are
expected to occur in the worlds poorest countries. To that note, those poor countries having less
access to quality and quantity information succumb to their unwarranted innocence. Thus, they
are the less well-equipped among all to understand and prepare for climate change.
Lankford notes that the two concepts, climate change and human rights, do not tread a
path towards a convergent point. The treaties involving the former may be conformant with the
idiosyncrasies of different states, if taken solely. However, if the human rights obligations of

each of the states under treaties which they are signatories thereto need to take precedence, much
of the states focus will course through satisfying the human rights. Why? Lankford pronounces
that the concept of violations in relation to human rights and an outlook that is more oriented
toward past harms than future harms, as is the case with respect to climate change is blatantly
taken in an encompassing notion of state-centricity.
Concurrently, Stephen Humphreys, Research Director at the International Council on
Human Rights Policy, in his work Climate Change and Human Rights: A Rough Guide,
explains that there is a mutual disinterest in climate change among human rights advocates. And,
that the primary cause appears to be a kind of disciplinary path-dependence. According to him,
climate change negotiations have centered on consensus-driven welfare-based solutions,
approaches that have historically thrived independently of and in parallel to human rights.
Human rights organizations, for their part, are unlikely, as a matter of professional orientation, to
take up issues framed as hypothetical or scenario-based, quite aside from the disciplinary
boundaries that have long existed between environmental and human rights law. It may be that
consideration of new and additional future harms simply escapes the ordinary purview of
human rights analysis.
Moreover, the silence appears to be due, then, to a significant and entrenched disciplinary gap
between the climate change and human right arenas. This situation is unlikely to last, however.
Climate change is profoundly transformational, and as it becomes increasingly felt, it will leave
no field of policy untouched. Human rights are especially relevant given the immense threat to

their fulfillment that climate change poses. As climate harms are increasingly felt, protection will
be sought in the law and language of human rights.1
Another point which the article discusses is the political standing of states on climate
change negotiations. Lankford rules out the interest of the state in solving the imminent problems
of climate change. Further, he supposes that there is still a bar to prioritizing resolutions to
climate change, questioning the capability of institutions to shell out money for the reforms
needed. To most, funding organizations advocating anti-climate change still is the least priority
for they do not answer the present problems. This is one of the reasons why most of the
environmental organizations are shelved to vanity.
The interplay between longstanding political and nationalist grievances and international
support for a climate change mitigation model is relevant for international support for climate
change in politically charged environments.
The tsunami that left Aceh in Jakarta, Indonesia bare in 2004 had been an eye-opener to
the international community. That brought an alarm to sleeping and non-active members of the
society - a wake-up call for an action to mitigate the impacts of climate change.
The local and national governments of Aceh and Indonesia had their way to join their collective
efforts not just in post-conflict restoration but also in prevention of the wide scope destruction of
future natural calamities.
Both the central government and the president recognized the need for flexibility and
autonomy, and gave the BRR license occasionally to run rough-shod even over their own
authority. Physical reconstruction and economic and livelihood reconstruction were in harmony
1

Stephen Humphreys, Climate Change and Human Rights A Rough Guide. International Council on Human Rights
Policy (Geneva: 2008), p. 5.

with institutional development and very explicitly and deliberately based upon deep social
understanding. This approach was in contrast to the international perspective, which focused
more on physical discovery from the tsunami, with the conflict seen as merely its historical
context. This focus on physically putting right the devastation caused by the tsunami permeated
decisions about targeting, the kind of aid delivered and the timeframe, where pressure to disburse
emergency funds was not always in line with the need to slowly recreate social, political and
economic relations.2
Anent the most well taken point in the article, that climate change affects the enjoyment
of human rights, Lankford correctly stresses out that the impacts will affect not only the basic
human rights but also those of certain vulnerable groups. Their rights are affected
disproportionately, with factors such as poverty, gender, age, indigenous or minority status, and
disability reinforcing the disparate impacts.
Human rights law is relevant because climate change causes human rights violations. But
a human rights lens can also be helpful in approaching and managing climate change. The human
rights framework reminds us that climate change is about suffering about the human misery
that results directly from the damage we are doing to nature. Many communities already feel the
adverse effects of warming temperatures yet so far few remedies are available to them.
While we cannot say precisely who will be affected in future, or how severely, the signs
are nevertheless clear. Where information is still lacking, as it often is, we know where and how
to gather it. Clearly, if we build human rights criteria into our future planning, we will better
understand who is at risk and how we should act to protect them.

Simon Levine, et. al., Conflict, Climate Change, and Politics: Why a techno approach fails the resilience challenge,
HPG Working Paper, 7 (2014).