Climate Change and Human Rights: How? Where? When?

Climate change poses a threat to several internationally recognized human rights, including the rights to food, a livelihood, health, a healthy environment, access to water and the rights to work and to cultural life. Actions taken to mitigate and adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change have to be centred on human rights. In negotiations for a binding international climate change instrument, nation states have been called upon to fully respect human rights in all climate-related actions. As important as this demand is, there is also the need to describe and plan how human rights can be integrated into international, national, subnational and corporate climate change strategies. This paper analyzes a few examples of national, subnational and corporate climate change policies to show how they have either enshrined human rights principles, or failed to do so