DEVE

Climate Justice: Keeping the right to development in mind, how can the EU exercise its moral authority to ensure a global commitment to tackle climate change, whilst safeguarding the rights of those affected most by its consequences?

Relevance of the topic

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, due primarily to fossil fuel use, have increased dramatically, causing an increase in Earth’s average temperature. The impacts of this unprecedented warming – floods and drought, rising sea levels, spread of diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, increasing numbers of violent storms – are to be more severe and imminent than previously believed and threaten fundamental human rights, including the rights to life, health, water, food, shelter, work and self-determination. In fact, vulnerable peoples, including women - which make up 80% of global climate refugees -, children, disabled and indigenous peoples, are particularly at risk. The actual objective of the sustainable development concept is balanced economic, social and environmental development and not defined solely in terms of economic growth. Sustainability policies in the climate change area have to be centred on the principles of equity and future justice, or how we can ensure that we have a future world to live in, without sacrificing the living standards of current generations, both developed and developing. The Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR), in its March 2009 study on climate change and human rights noted that climate change is a global problem that can only be effectively addressed through international cooperation, as it affects disproportionately poorer countries with the weakest ability to protect their citizens. It also emphasizes States’ obligations under international human rights law and the right to development, proclaimed by the United Nations (UN) in the Declaration on the Right to Development, to protect individuals whose rights are affected by the impacts of climate change or by policies to address climate change. Yet, so far, governments and international cooperation have been unsuccessful in solving the climate change issue. Thus, following on the right to development and taking into account the disproportion of both GHG emissions, that are and were historically mostly emitted by developed countries, and the fact that most of the consequences are being undertaken by developing nations due to differential factors such as income, race, class, gender, capital and political representation, arises the concept of climate justice and of common but differentiated responsibilities, which is central to the climate change regime.