What’s in a Right? Concretizing States’ Climate Change Mitigation Obligations under Human Rights Law

Abstract

States owe duties under human rights law to protect individuals from climate harm by mitigating climate change individually and collectively, in order to secure the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal. It is, however, unclear what human rights law requires of states generally in terms of emissions reduction trajectories. This article elucidates that question, by looking at what reduction obligations can be deduced from scholarship and the work of human rights enforcement mandates. It argues that it is not possible to deduce individualized reduction obligations or methods to calculate such obligations from the current body of human rights law. The article then explores three different pathways to achieve such concretization: law-making, litigation, and monitoring bodies. The analysis provides a platform for human rights law to realize its potential in advancing state ambition on mitigating climate change at the norm-level by assessing the promise of the different pathways to concretization.