CLIMATE CHANGE: TACKLING THE GREATEST HUMAN RIGHTS CHALLENGE OF OUR TIME

The document asserts that climate change is a major human rights challenge, threatening rights to life, health, and food security, particularly for vulnerable groups. It criticizes the UNFCCC for slow progress in operationalizing rights protections and recommends that the 2015 climate agreement include explicit human rights obligations, establish institutional safeguards, create a dedicated work programme on human rights and climate change, and implement a grievance mechanism to address harms caused by mitigation and adaptation activities.

• Climate change directly threatens fundamental human rights through environmental impacts: sea level rise threatens self-determination and housing; temperature increases affect health and fisheries; extreme weather events impact life and education; and precipitation changes threaten food security and water access.
• Climate mitigation and adaptation efforts can themselves cause human rights violations, such as REDD+ activities negatively impacting indigenous peoples' rights or large-scale energy projects forcing communities from ancestral lands without consent.
• While the UNFCCC recognized in the 2010 Cancun Agreements that Parties should 'fully respect human rights' in climate actions, the document argues that minimal progress has been made in operationalizing these protections within the UNFCCC process.
• The authors recommend that the 2015 climate agreement commit to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and provide compensation for unavoidable climate-related loss and damage to lives, livelihoods, and culture.
• To operationalize rights, the UNFCCC should establish an institutional safeguard system comprising social and environmental policies, monitoring systems, grievance mechanisms, and meaningful participation in decision-making.
• The document proposes the creation of a formal work programme on human rights and climate change reporting to the COP to monitor progress and exchange best practices.

APA

Center for International Environmental Law (2015). CLIMATE CHANGE: TACKLING THE GREATEST HUMAN RIGHTS CHALLENGE OF OUR TIME. https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/CCandHR_Feb2015.pdf

Chicago

Center for International Environmental Law. CLIMATE CHANGE: TACKLING THE GREATEST HUMAN RIGHTS CHALLENGE OF OUR TIME. 2015. https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/CCandHR_Feb2015.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Center for International Environmental Law |title=CLIMATE CHANGE: TACKLING THE GREATEST HUMAN RIGHTS CHALLENGE OF OUR TIME |date=February 2015 |url=https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/CCandHR_Feb2015.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{centerforinternationalenvironmentallaw2015climate, author = {{Center for International Environmental Law}}, title = {{CLIMATE CHANGE: TACKLING THE GREATEST HUMAN RIGHTS CHALLENGE OF OUR TIME}}, institution = {Center for International Environmental Law}, year = {2015}, month = feb, url = {https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/CCandHR_Feb2015.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }