Human Rights at the ICJ

The dual challenges of ensuring human rights are secured and preventing harm to the climate system, are deeply interrelated. Climate change significantly impacts human rights in all its dimensions: From infringing the right to life to the ways in which climate change disproportionately impacts specific groups of people such as indigenous communities, women, children, and people living in poverty. The ICJ has previously recognized this connection noting that “the environment is not an abstraction but represents the living space, the quality of life and the very health of human beings”

When environmental damage threatens people’s health and the quality of life, obligations arise for States concerning the environment which are directly linked to human rights obligations. These obligations are extensive, encompassing a vast array of legal duties which are enshrined in the applicable legal framework.

Grounded in international human rights law, the obligation to protect the right to life encompasses duties to prevent harm to the environment, including from climate change. States are obliged to ensure that they take measures to prevent and mitigate the effects of climate change, to avoid it threatening the lives and wellbeing of citizens. This includes reducing greenhouse gas emissions, promoting clean energy, and adapting to the impacts of climate change. States have a duty to protect their citizens from foreseeable harm, including harm caused by climate change, and to ensure that their actions do not contribute to human rights violations.

States are obliged to address climate change in order to ensure that individuals and communities have the ability to freely determine their political status and pursue their economic, social, and cultural development. This includes the full enjoyment of subsidiary rights such as the right to life, adequate food, water, health, housing, productive use of property, cultural practices, and traditions.

States have obligations to ensure the enjoyment of the right to a healthy environment. Such measures include effectively implementing laws and policies that promote environmental protection, providing information to the public about environmental risks and hazards, establishing participatory mechanisms for decision-making on environmental matters, and enforcing environmental standards and regulations.

In fulfilling their obligations to respect the right to health, States must refrain from unlawfully polluting the environment, enact and enforce laws to prevent water, air and soil pollution by extractive and manufacturing industries, and adopt measures against environmental and occupational health hazards.

States are obliged to prevent interference with a person’s privacy, family or home. This right includes protection against the effects of climate change, and entails the obligation to adequately address the causes and effects of climate change to protect the right to private and family life.

The right to seek, receive and impart information obliges States to provide appropriate access to information concerning the environment that is held by public authorities, including information on hazardous materials and activities in their communities. Additionally, States are obliged to encourage and facilitate public awareness and participation by making information widely available.

States must provide access to effective remedies through judicial and other redress mechanisms, including restoration of the environment—to individuals and communities who suffer violations to their human rights because of the harm caused by climate change. While domestic authorities are primarily responsible for ensuring human rights are enforced, international and regional human rights systems must also be accessible for victims where domestic remedies are not available or not effective in practice.

Finally, States must integrate the principles of non-discrimination and best interests of the child, together with the intercultural and gender approaches into their climate policies, so as to adequately address the intersectionality of human rights violations arising from States acts of omissions in the face of the climate emergency.