The effects of climate change on human rights are one of the most prominent issues of concern to domestic and international public opinion for several reasons, including the threat that climate change represents to human life, especially in poorer countries where the human cost is increasing year after year.
Climate change discussions used mostly to focus on the scientific, environmental, and economic aspects of the phenomenon, and with it on the development of the scientific understanding of the causes of it. However, more recently the focus of discussions has expanded, and the human and social dimensions of climate change have increasingly been receiving attention.
This has culminated in the issuance of a number of resolutions by the UN Human Rights Council that have drawn attention to the impacts of climate change and its immediate and long-term threat to basic rights, underlining the need for international solidarity to confront this phenomenon.
With the human cost of climate change increasing year by year, it has become imperative to put human rights at the forefront of debate and to understand it through a human rights lens.
Climate change is mostly due to human activities. The evidence for this is that greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere, seen as responsible for global warming, now far exceed the pre-industrial levels recorded in polar ice cores 650,000 years ago, with the main source of this increase being the combustion of fossil fuels.
Climate change is having dire effects on human rights, with these varying from one right to another, from one human group to another, and from one country to another. Its impacts on human rights in Europe, for example, are not the same as they are in Africa or Asia.
According to a warning issued by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its report issued in 2018, the world has only ten years to reduce global warming by 1.5 degrees Celsius in order to help to prevent the most catastrophic effects of climate change.
Without taking urgent measures, climate change, causing among things extreme weather events and rising sea levels, will expose millions of people to risks that encompass all their rights, including those set out below.
THE RIGHT TO LIFE
It is estimated that 262 million people were affected by climate disasters annually between 2000 and 2004, more than 97 per cent of them living in the developing countries. Tropical cyclones alone killed 250,000 people between 1980 and 2000, for example.
According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), nearly seven million people around the world die every year as a result of air pollution.
THE RIGHT TO FOOD
It is estimated that due to climate change crop productivity will decrease, which will increase the risk of hunger and food insecurity in poorer regions of the world. According to a 2015 report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), four out of five poor people live in countries prone to natural disasters and with high levels of environmental degradation. Climate change could reduce agricultural output by up to 30 per cent in Africa and 21 per cent in Asia. Such impacts on agricultural livelihoods represent the main increase in poverty caused by climate change.
THE RIGHT TO CLEAN WATER
Climate change has led to the loss of glaciers and the reduction of snow cover in many parts of the world, which, according to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in its 2006 report, has negatively affected more than one-sixth of the world’s population. In addition, if this process continues it will deprive an estimated 1.1 billion people of safe access to drinking water, constituting a major cause of illness and disease.
THE RIGHT TO HEALTH
This is expected to face many problems as a result of climate change, most notably an increase in malnutrition and the spread of disease, including the exacerbation of respiratory and infectious diseases among the populations of poorer countries. By 2050, experts predict that climate change will cause an additional 250,000 deaths each year from malaria, diarrhea, heat stress, and malnutrition.
In addition to its immediate effects on a set of fundamental rights, climate change will also inflict further tragic suffering in the long run by wiping out entire peoples and destroying entire societies.
Between 50 and 250 million people may have been forced to move by the middle of this century, either within their countries or outside their borders and either permanently or temporarily. While some of these movements will be voluntary, motivated by the search for a better life in areas that have not been negatively affected by climate change, many people will be forced to leave their homes due to sudden weather disasters or slowly occurring environmental degradation.
The effects of climate change interacting with economic, social, and political problems in many parts of the world will generate a high potential for violent conflict in 46 countries with populations of 2.7 billion people. This has already started in several regions, in which climate change has already led to the outbreak of armed conflicts and violence.
The African Sahel provides an example of how such conflicts have been exacerbated by the effects of climate change. Over recent decades, exploitable land in this part of the world has declined with fluctuating rainfall levels and diminishing rainy seasons. Since late 2018, an estimated 33 million people in the Sahel have been classified as food insecure, and the International Committee for Red Cross (ICRC) has been monitoring the struggle of these poor communities to access safe healthcare services, schools for their children, and basic incomes.
Climate change is a social, economic, security and humanitarian issue that has severe impacts on human rights directly and indirectly at the individual and collective levels. Its negative effects are distributed unevenly, as it affects disproportionately the poorest regions and countries in the world, and its effects extend beyond the current generations, also affecting the rights of subsequent generations.
This indicates the importance of addressing the human rights threats posed by climate change and the need to take appropriate measures consistent with the overall objectives of human rights.
*The writer is human rights officer at the Supreme Standing Committee for Human Rights.
*A version of this article appears in print in the 10 November, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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