The Climate Docket

WHAT WE COVER:

  • Liability Litigation
    • Baltimore Lawsuit
    • California Climate Lawsuits
    • Colorado Lawsuit
    • Mass. v. Exxon
    • New York City Lawsuit
    • Rhode Island Lawsuit
    • Other Suits
  • Access to Courts
    • Liability Waivers
    • State Legislation
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Subscribe

Powered by Genesis

You are here: Home / Featured / Effort to Hold Governments Accountable Grows As Climate Impacts Worsen
Effort to Hold Governments Accountable Grows As Climate Impacts Worsen

Effort to Hold Governments Accountable Grows As Climate Impacts Worsen

April 2, 2019 Filed Under: Featured

print

By Dana Drugmand

The impacts of climate change are accelerating, and human rights organizations are increasingly urging governments across the globe to uphold their human rights obligations by taking meaningful steps to curb climate change, according to a pair of recently released reports.

This could spur an increase in climate change-related litigation.

Climate harms are worsening as carbon emissions, global average temperatures and sea levels continue to rise, according to the 2018 “State of the Global Climate” report, released Thursday by the UN’s World Meteorological Association (WMO).  

Ocean heat is at a record high, and approximately 37 billion tons of carbon dioxide were emitted in 2018 – also a record high. Extreme weather impacted every continent and affected nearly 62 million people globally.  

The world is also failing to meet its climate goals as outlined in the Paris Agreement. At the end of 2015, 195 nations adopted the agreement, with the aim of keeping temperature rise “well below 2 degrees Celsius.”  The last four years were the warmest on record, according to the report.

In response to those rising impacts, human rights treaty bodies that monitor the implementation of United Nations accords, made an unprecedented number of recommendations last year regarding the legal obligations nations have to guard against climate harms, according to a recent report by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) and the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (GI-ESCR).

While the Paris Agreement is not legally binding, human rights conventions and treaties do carry legal obligations, and there is a growing effort to hold governments accountable to both human rights and climate obligations.

Courts around the world are increasingly extending existing rights protections to include climate harms, according to a recent article by law professors Jacqueline Peel and Hari M. Osofsky.

“Human rights litigation may become an important tool to deal with the human impacts of failing to address climate change,” wrote Peel and Osofsky.

Courts in the Netherlands and Colombia have ordered governments to take stronger climate action based in part on human rights obligations.

Cases are currently pending in Germany, France, Ireland, Switzerland, the European Union, Canada, and the U.S. Citizens in these countries have filed suit against their national governments claiming violations of their fundamental rights due to the kind of accelerating climate impacts outlined in the new WMO report and other scientific warnings.

By clarifying these obligations, UN treaty bodies could provide indirect guidance for judges in climate litigation, said Sébastien Duyck, a senior attorney with CIEL.

The human rights treaty bodies have “an essential role to play in clarifying the extent of States’ human rights obligations in the context of climate change,” according to the CIEL report.

One treaty body, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), issued a statement in October 2018 coinciding with the IPCC’s Special Report on limiting warming to 1.5°C. The statement recognized that climate change severely threatens economic, social, and cultural rights. It also reminded countries of their human rights obligations and that “a failure to prevent foreseeable human rights harm caused by climate change” could amount to a breach of their obligations.

Another, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), said that nations must “take into account the greater vulnerability of women in the face of natural disasters and climate change” and “ensure access to justice for women.” This includes “ensuring the availability of effective [legal] remedies in case of human rights violations by private actors, occurring from activities both inside and outside a State’s territory,” according to CIEL’s report.

“By bringing a more traditional human rights lens to this we can look beyond emissions targets to assess whether a state is acting sufficiently [on climate change] or not,” said Duyck.

The WMO report details various indicators of this failure such as accelerated sea level rise, rising global average temperature and widespread and deadly extreme weather.

“The data released in this report give cause for great concern,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres wrote in a statement.

Guterres, who is convening a climate summit New York City later this year, is calling on world leaders to “come with a plan” rather than lofty speeches.

“There is no longer any time for delay.”


Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: Featured

Don't Miss a story
Subscribe 
We promise not to spam you. Unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Thanks for subscribing! Please check your email for further instructions.
Don't Miss a story
Subscribe 
We promise not to spam you. Unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Thanks for subscribing! Please check your email for further instructions.

Latest News

Justice Dept. to Argue on Side of Oil Companies in Supreme Court Hearing

By Karen Savage The acting solicitor general will be allowed time to argue in support of ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP and nearly two dozen other companies next week during oral arguments before … [Read More...]

Recent Posts

  • Colorado Judge Rejects Oil Companies’ Attempt to Move Climate Case
  • Biden’s DOJ Could Help Swing Momentum Around Climate Cases
  • Supreme Court Questions Oil Companies’ Tactics to Shake Climate Cases
  • Will Amy Coney Barrett, Whose Father Was a Shell Attorney for Decades, Recuse from Climate Suit?

Most Popular

  • Climate Case Gets Green Light from European Union Court
  • What Oil Companies Knew About Climate Change and When: A Timeline
  • Court: Climate Impacts of Pipeline Projects Cannot Be Ignored
  • Richmond Battles Chevron, Its Biggest Employer, in Two Important Lawsuits
  • France, Home of the Paris Agreement, Faces Lawsuit for Lack of Climate Progress

Categories

  • Access to Courts
  • Baltimore Lawsuit
  • California Climate Lawsuits
  • Charleston, S.C. Lawsuit
  • Colorado Lawsuit
  • Connecticut Lawsuit
  • Delaware Lawsuit
  • Exxon Climate Investigation
  • Featured
  • Hoboken Lawsuit
  • International
  • Latest News
  • Liability Litigation
  • Liability Waivers
  • Mass. v. Exxon
  • Minnesota Lawsuit
  • New York City Lawsuit
  • Other Suits
  • Politics
  • Rhode Island Lawsuit
  • State Legislation
  • Uncategorized
  • Washington DC Lawsuit

Follow us

  • View climatedocket’s profile on Facebook
  • View climatedocket’s profile on Twitter

RSS

RSS Feed RSS - Posts

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.