ABSTRACT

Over the last decade, the world has increasingly grappled with the complex linkages emerging between efforts to combat climate change and to protect human rights around the world. The Paris Climate Agreement adopted in December 2015 recognized the necessity for governments to take into consideration their human rights obligations when taking climate action. However, important gaps remain in understanding how human rights can be used in practice to develop and implement effective and equitable solutions to climate change at multiple levels of governance.

This book brings together leading scholars and practitioners to offer a timely and comprehensive analysis of the opportunities and challenges for integrating human rights in diverse areas and forms of global climate governance. The first half of the book explores how human rights principles and obligations can be used to reconceive climate governance and shape responses to particular aspects of climate change. The second half of the book identifies lessons in the integration of human rights in climate advocacy and governance and sets out future directions in this burgeoning domain.

Featuring a diverse range of contributors and case studies, this Handbook will be an essential resource for students, scholars, practitioners and policy makers with an interest in climate law and governance, human rights and international environmental law.

part I|72 pages

Conceptual foundations

chapter 3|12 pages

Climate change and human rights

Fragmentation, interplay, and institutional linkages

chapter 4|15 pages

Local rights claims in international negotiations

Transnational human rights networks at the climate conferences

chapter 5|15 pages

Rights, representation and recognition

Practicing advocacy for women and Indigenous Peoples in UN climate negotiations

part II|92 pages

International framework

chapter 7|20 pages

Climate change impacts

Human rights in climate adaptation and loss and damage

chapter 10|20 pages

From Copenhagen to Paris at the UN Human Rights Council

When climate change became a human rights issue

part III|71 pages

Early lessons

chapter 11|16 pages

Look before you jump

Assessing the potential influence of the human rights bandwagon on domestic climate policy

chapter 12|16 pages

Rights, justice, and REDD+

Lessons from climate advocacy and early implementation in the Amazon Basin

part IV|62 pages

Stakeholder perspectives

chapter 16|12 pages

From Marrakesh to Marrakesh

The rise of gender equality in the global climate governance and climate action

chapter 17|8 pages

Energy justice

The intersection of human rights and climate justice

chapter 18|7 pages

Overlooked and undermined

Child rights and climate change

chapter 19|14 pages

Human rights, differentiated responsibilities?

Advancing equity and human rights in the climate change regime

chapter 20|12 pages

Climate justice and human rights

chapter 21|7 pages

Securing workers’ rights in the transition to a low-carbon world

The just transition concept and its evolution

part V|58 pages

Regional case studies

chapter 22|11 pages

‘There Is No Time Left’

Climate change, environmental threats, and human rights in Turkana County, Kenya

chapter 23|7 pages

Human rights and climate change

Focusing on South Asia

chapter 24|6 pages

Climate change and the European Court of Human Rights

Future potentials

chapter 27|8 pages

Connecting human rights and short-lived climate pollutants

The Arctic angle

chapter 28|10 pages

Climate change and human rights in the Commonwealth Caribbean

Case studies of The Bahamas and Trinidad and Tobago

part VI|64 pages

Future directions

chapter 31|7 pages

Climate change

Human rights and private remedies

chapter 32|10 pages

Towards responsible renewable energy

Assessing 50 wind and hydropower companies’ human rights policies in the context of rising allegations of abuse

chapter 33|8 pages

Intersectionalities, human rights, and climate change

Emerging linkages in the practice of the UN human rights monitoring system