With rising effects of climate change across the globe, the world has started recognizing that climate change is not just an ecological collapse, but also a human rights crisis.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk echoed this message in Geneva earlier this year and posed a question before the Human Rights Council:
“Are we taking the steps needed to protect people from climate chaos, safeguard their futures and manage natural resources in ways that respect human rights and the environment?”
His answer was very simple: we are not doing nearly enough.
In this regard, the impacts of climate change must be understood not only as a climate emergency, but also as a violation of human rights, Professor Joyeeta Gupta told UN News recently
She is the co-chair of the international scientific advisory body Earth Commission and one of the United Nations’ high-level representatives for science, technology and innovation for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Professor Gupta said that the 1992 climate convention never quantified human harm.
She noted that when the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015, the global consensus settled on limiting warming to 2° Celsius, later acknowledging 1.5° Celsius as a safer goal.
But for small island states, even that was a compromise forced by power imbalance, and “for them, two degrees was not survivable,” said Professor Gupta.
“Rising seas, saltwater intrusion, and extreme storms threaten to erase entire nations. When wealthy countries demanded scientific proof, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was tasked with studying the difference between 1.5° Celsius and 2° Celsius,” she continued.
She said that the results were clear that 1.5° Celsius is significantly less destructive but still dangerous.
In her own research published in Nature, she argues that one degree Celsius is the just boundary, because beyond that point, the impacts of climate change violate the rights of more than one percent of the global population, around 100 million people.
The tragedy, she noted, is that the world crossed one degree in 2017, and it is likely to breach 1.5° Celsius by 2030.
She underscored that the promises of cooling later in the century ignore irreversible damage, including melting glaciers, collapsing ecosystems and lost lives. UN News
“If Himalayan glaciers melt,” she said, “they won’t come back. We will be living with the consequences forever.”
Climate justice and development go hand in hand. Every basic right–from water and food to housing, mobility and electricity–requires energy.
“There is a belief that we can meet the Sustainable Development Goals without changing how rich people live. That doesn’t work mathematically or ethically,” Professor Gupta explained.
Her research shows that meeting basic human needs has a significant emissions footprint.
The research also highlights that since the planet has already crossed safe limits, wealthy societies must reduce emissions far more aggressively, not only to protect the climate, but to create carbon space for others to realize their rights.
“Failing to do so turns inequality into injustice,” she underlined.
Displacement is one of the most obvious effects of climate injustice. Yet international law still does not recognize ‘climate refugees.’
Professor Gupta explains the progression clearly.
“Climate change first forces adaptation for example, shifting from water-intensive rice to drought-resistant crops. When adaptation fails, people absorb losses: land, livelihoods, security. When survival itself becomes impossible, displacement begins,” she said.
“If land becomes too dry to grow crops and there is no drinking water,” she said, “people are forced to leave.”
She added that the most climate displacement today occurs within countries or regions, not across continents.
“Moving is expensive, dangerous and often unwanted. The legal challenge lies in proving causation: Did people leave because of climate change, or because of other factors like poor governance or market failures?
“This is where attribution science becomes crucial. New studies now compare decades of data to show when and how climate change alters rainfall, heat, health outcomes, and extreme events. As this science advances, it may become possible to integrate climate displacement into international refugee law,” she noted.
“That,” she said, “will be the next step.”
