Climate change, human rights, and adaptive mobility

Thesis

This thesis explores the way that international law and its rules, rights, and obligations can address the impacts of climate change and respond to the risks they create for those most vulnerable. More specifically, it focuses on obligations related to adaptation within the climate change regime and argues that human mobility is part of the process of adaptation that States are obliged to enable in certain circumstances. In doing so, the thesis offers an addition to the legal protection provided by other areas of international law, which is often limited to movement that is forced and tends to provide legal status only after people have moved or crossed State borders. Furthermore, unlike legal scholarship that considers the problems posed by climate-related displacement, this thesis begins from the premise that mobility can be a beneficial adaptation strategy—particularly if undertaken in an anticipatory, proactive, and precautionary manner.

To reach this conclusion, the thesis applies the tools of treaty interpretation to argue that international human rights law should be integrated into the interpretation and application of adaptation obligations in the climate change regime. The analysis focuses on the rights to life and to an adequate standard of living. It highlights the need to integrate the positive duties accompanying these rights, particularly those related to survival and subsistence, which are central to the ability and decision to move. The process of interpretation also includes the operative principles of the regime, with precaution, equity, and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities being the most pertinent. Combined with the integration of international human rights law, these principles provide the basis for the key arguments of this thesis: that States must act to address foreseeable risks to human rights; in doing so, they must prioritize those most vulnerable; in some contexts, this requires that States plan for and implement measures to facilitate adaptive mobility, whether within or across borders; and that developed countries are obliged to support vulnerable developing countries in undertaking such measures.

Authors: Nishimura, LS

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-9orddjybv
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: migration; international climate change law; international law; human mobility; climate change adaptation; climate change; international human rights law; treaty interpretation
• Subjects: International law; Migration; Human rights; Global environmental change