preface

Although the climate crisis affects everyone on the planet, it does not affect everyone in the same way. Some individuals, communities, and countries are in positions of greater vulnerability than others.

Human rights law provides an informative lens through which to examine the issue of vulnerability and climate change. Human rights and environmental protection are interdependent. A safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment is necessary for the full enjoyment of human rights, including the rights to life, to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, and to the right to a healthy environment itself. At the same time, the exercise of human rights, including rights to freedom of expression and association, to education and information, and to participation and effective remedies, is vital to the protection of the environment.

While this relationship holds true for everyone, some people are more at risk than others. As the Human Rights Council has recognized, the consequences of environmental harm are felt most acutely by those segments of the population that are already in vulnerable situations.1 Persons may be vulnerable because they are unusually susceptible to certain types of environmental harm, or because they are denied their human rights, or both.

In 2018, in my last report to the Council as the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, I presented Framework Principles on Human Rights and the Environment, which summarized the human rights obligations relating to the environment as they had been clarified by human rights bodies. Many of the Framework Principles concern the rights that all of us have in relation to the environment, and the corresponding obligations of States to respect, protect, and fulfill those rights. However, Framework Principle 14 speaks directly to the question of vulnerability. It says: “States should take additional measures to protect the rights of those who are most vulnerable to, or

1. See, e.g., Human Rights Council resolution 34/20 (24 March 2017).

at particular risk from, environmental harm, taking into account their needs, risks and capacities.”2

There are countless ways that vulnerability may intersect with environmental harm in general, and with climate change in particular. In the most extreme cases, communities who are marginalized because of their minority or other status may be forced to bear so much of the burden of pollution and environmental degradation that their homes and communities become what David Boyd, the current Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, has called “sacrifice zones.” As he stated in his 2022 report to the Human Rights Council, “sacrifice zone can be understood to be a place where residents suffer devastating physical and mental health consequences and human rights violations as a result of living in pollution hotspots and heavily contaminated areas.”3 He described many examples of sacrifice zones all over the world, and correctly called them “a stain upon the collective conscience of humanity.”4

Boyd noted in his report that the climate crisis is creating new sacrifice zones, as “communities have become, and are becoming, uninhabitable because of extreme weather events or slow-onset disasters, including drought and rising sea levels.”5 Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that the climate crisis threatens to cause entire parts of the world to become sacrifice zones. Those living in low-lying island states, in coastal regions, in the Arctic, in the Sahel, and in many other places are at grave risk from the effects of a rapidly warming planet. Indeed, many communities are already experiencing these effects, such as increasing extreme weather events, rising sea levels, melting permafrost, wildfire, floods, and drought.

Making matters even worse, those most at risk have almost always contributed the least to the problem. Typically economically poor, politically disadvantaged, and socially marginalized, they are not the source of significant greenhouse gas emissions, and they have little or no input into the government policies that allow those emissions to continue to rise.

To protect the rights of those who are particularly vulnerable to or at risk from environmental harm, States should ensure that their laws and policies take into account the ways that some parts of the population are more susceptible to environmental harm, and the barriers they face to exercising their human rights related to the environment. For example, States should develop disaggregated data on the specific effects of environmental harm on different segments of the population to provide a basis for ensuring that their laws and policies adequately protect against such harm. States should take effective measures to raise the

2. Framework Principles on Human Rights and the Environment, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the issue of human rights obligations relating to the enjoyment of a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment, UN Doc. A/HRC/37/59 (24 January 2018), annex, p. 17. 3. The right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment: non-toxic environment; report of the Special Rapporteur on the issue of human rights obligations relating to the enjoyment of a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment, UN Doc. A/HRC/49/53 (12 January 2022), para. 27. 4. Id. para. 29. 5. Id. para. 27.

awareness of environmental threats among those persons who are most at risk. Assessments of the environmental and human rights impacts of proposed projects and policies must include a careful examination of the impacts on the most vulnerable, in particular.

In developing and implementing international environmental agreements, States should include strategies and programmes to identify and protect those vulnerable to the threats addressed in the agreements. Domestic and international environmental standards should be set at levels that protect against harm to vulnerable segments of the population, and States should use appropriate indicators and benchmarks to assess implementation. When measures to safeguard against or mitigate adverse impacts are impossible or ineffective, States must facilitate access to effective remedies for violations and abuses of the rights of those most vulnerable to environmental harm.6

All of these obligations apply with particular force in the context of climate change. Human rights norms make clear that States have obligations both to take measures to help their own people adapt to its effects, but also to work together to achieve the goals that the international community has recognized must be met in order to avoid catastrophe: most importantly, the goal of keeping the temperature increase well below two degrees Celsius.

Increasingly, courts in many countries around the world are using rightsbased claims to require governments and other actors to take their fair share of the actions necessary. Decisions from Colombia, Germany, the Netherlands, and Pakistan, among many others, show how human rights can be used to push States and multinational corporations to meet their own commitments.

Although these cases provide grounds for hope, it would be an enormous mistake to conclude that we have turned a corner, or that rights-based approaches will necessarily protect those who are most vulnerable to climate change. We still have very far to go.

That is why this book is so important, and so timely. By shining a brighter light on many aspects of the intersection of climate change and vulnerability, the distinguished editors of and contributors to this volume demonstrate the scale and scope of the challenge we face. Just as importantly, their contributions help to illuminate steps that should be taken to address it. Their analysis should help to inform the development of better and more effective climate policies that seek to protect the human rights of the most vulnerable.

John H. KnOx Former Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment (2012-2018) and Henry C. Lauerman Professor of International Law at Wake Forest University, US

6. Framework Principles, supra, commentary on Principle 14, p. 18.