Human rights and climate change: an approach that puts people in the forefront of the debate
Commonwealth Secretariat discussion paper number 5:
This paper addresses the human rights dimensions of climate change, urging a human rights approach be taken in climate change negotiations, through mitigation and adaptation strategies. It maps the landscape, explains the added value that a human rights lens brings to the discussions and suggests some ways that the Commonwealth and others can bring this lens to the negotiating table. It does so in the context of the emergence of a new discourse at the United Nations that has begun to connect human rights and climate change, and against the background of preparations for the fifteenth UN Climate Change Conference (COP5).
It calls for appropriate and sustainable responses to climate change as some Commonwealth states are already feeling the impacts of rising sea levels, contaminated water, depleted marine resources and erosion of shorelines, and experimenting vulnerability to climate change for a number of reasons other than size, including remoteness and isolation and susceptibility to 'natural' disasters and environmental change, causing some forced migration and health concerns as well.
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