Climate Change & Human Rights

The interdependence and interrelatedness of human rights and the environment was first recognised in Principle 1 of the 1972 Stockholm Declaration. However, it was not until the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015 that a major international normative instrument on climate change made explicit reference to human rights. As the scientific community has arrived at a consensus on the ways in which climate change affects the human population, there has also been an increase in discourse around the nature of the linkages between climate change and human rights. Through its research, the Climate and Environment Initiative (CEI) explores the different ways in which climate change and human rights are inextricably linked and how international human rights law can provide an avenue to tackle climate change.