Are International Human Rights Instruments Effective In Protecting People's Rights from the Global Effects of Climate Change?

Master's Thesis from the year 2017 in the subject Politics - Topic: Public International Law and Human Rights, grade: A, Birkbeck, University of London, language: English, abstract: This study seeks to address the issue of climate change through a human rights lens by focusing on the causes of climate change and its impacts on both the environment and human rights. It highlights the close link between capitalist industrialization and environmental degradation and explains how this consequently leads to human rights violations. This research tackles human rights approach to climate change with a special focus on international human rights instruments mainly the two international covenants, the ICCPR and the ICESCR, it seeks to understand whether they impose international obligations on states to protect human rights from the adverse effects of climate change and how those imposed duties can be enforced to effectively protect people's rights. Unfortunately, this paper will reach to the conclusion that the existing human rights law does not adequately protect human rights from the lethal threat of climate change, due to the absence of a universally recognized right to a healthy environment, moreover, despite the possibility of the extraterritorial application of the ICESCR, the political will of states to cooperate under the provisions of the covenant to face the issue of climate change seems to be also absent.