How climate change affects your human rights

As Fijians grapple with the ongoing impact of climate change, in one way or the other, their human rights are also impacted. With the recent cyclones, most Fijians had their rights to housing, health, food and water affected.

Human Rights Officer Robert Vaughan from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Regional Office for the Pacific, said the climate crisis directly and indirectly impacted people’s human rights.

“We see environments and weather patterns change, and this can lead to harmful effects such as droughts, floods, sea-level rises, heat waves, extreme weather events, loss of biodiversity and the collapse of ecosystems, all of which can impact the way people live, make a living and survive,” he said.

The Pacific Island countries are already experiencing the impact of climate change on their human rights.

Mr Vaughan said in the Pacific, the right to food was affected as sea level rose.

“Some human rights affected by climate change are rights to life, housing and adequate standard of living, health, food, water and sanitation, work, development and self-determination and cultural rights,” he said.

“Rights such as the right to information, freedom of expression, association and assembly can also be affected. It can limit people’s ability to demand climate action.”

He said human rights were indivisible and interlinked; if one right was affected by the climate crisis another may be closely impacted.

Mr Vaughan gave an example of how people are affected.

“If an individual loses their house to an extreme weather event then their right to housing is affected, their displacement or homelessness as a result may affect their ability to work, loss of income and this results in the inability to care for themselves and/or their family, including the right to education of their children.”

South Pacific Community Senior Human Rights Adviser Martin Child said climate change affected all human rights and severity of natural disaster, would affect millions of people’s rights to life, physical safety, and security.

Mr Child outlined how the following human rights can be affected by climate impact:

Sea level rise is likely to displace whole communities, affecting the right to land and to have a home;

Climate refugees may be rendered stateless or otherwise have their civil and political rights stripped from them;

Cultural rights are also impacted here, because people may be forced to leave the lands of their ancestors – and abandon their grave sites – in search of safety;

Freedom of movement will certainly be curtailed. A hotter climate will deprive many people of the right to health, through exposure, unsanitary conditions, and associated disease; and

Climate change increases the risk of resource scarcity and conflict, and could see major wars, social breakdown, and economic collapse.

“In Fiji, one need only recall the recent history of severe tropical cyclones and their impact to see these vulnerabilities clearly exposed,” he said.

“However, the story of the Pacific is also one of resilience, and we also have many advantages in this region including a wealth of traditional knowledge that can be brought to bear on this issue.”