The Case for Understanding Inadequate National Responses to Climate Change as Human Rights Violations

This chapter examines what sense can be made of the claim that failure of nations to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can be understood as a violation of the human rights of others.

If climate change policies are understood to raise human rights issues, the consequences for policymaking are huge. This is so because if governments’ approach to climate change can create human rights violations:

• Nations will not be able to look at national interest alone in creating climate change policies.