HOT TOPICS

SICK OF THE WEATHER?

Michael Depledge* and Cinnamon Carlarne** discuss climate change, health and human rights.

Many of us are sick of the weather. In the future, however, this is an expression that may take on a more literal meaning. Our health and well-being may be increasingly threatened by climate change. This raises important new questions. Must we accept that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions will change rapidly our weather and living conditions? Will this expose us to new illnesses? Can we expect governments and international bodies to protect us? What rights do we have in this regard?

For many people, climate change is both a cause for concern and a source of confusion. The sheer range of underlying causes and emerging consequences coupled with the threats posed to physical, social and economic well-being make climate change seem at once urgent but also beyond the reach of the public and private sectors. Unlike other global and domestic environmental problems such as ozone depletion, waste disposal or water pollution - which are complex but arguably more understandable and manageable technologically  - climate change imposes layers of seemingly daunting scientific and social complexity. Vulnerable and disadvantaged groups of people are likely to suffer disproportionately from the effects of climate change. This is true particularly with regard to effects on human health and well-being.

Changes in the global climate are producing a myriad of unexpected adverse effects on humans. In the coming years, health impacts will become more severeand more obvious. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that global warming and altered precipitation patterns associated with greenhouse gas emissions are now claiming over 150,000 lives annually.  Many prevalent human diseases are linked to climate shifts. Well-known examples include the spread of malaria and cholera, as well as cardiovascular disease associated with heat waves. The single greatest threat to health globally is malnutrition resulting from climate impacts on crop and seafood production. Despite progress on the part of the international community in negotiating and ratifying legal instruments to address climate change, few people have a thorough grasp of the likely consequences in relation to adverse impacts on human health and well-being.

Important but less common diseases have been overlooked; the changing conditions in which people live have not been considered fully (for example, the demographic shift to urban environments); and the implications of migration and social disturbances in relation to psychiatric disorders have not been addressed adequately. Groups such as WHO and the Intergovernmental Panel on climate Change (IPCC) have undoubtedly made progress in identifying specific climate-related human health risks.  Somehow,

however, the human health dimensions of climate change have evaded widespread attention and evaluation, especially in legal, political and public fora. Politicians, policy makers and the general public have been presented with only a narrow preview of the emerging threats to human health, and often are not in a position to judge either the seriousness of the threat, or where and when specific damage will occur. They have little overall context in which to judge and respond to the risks. Even experts usually see only part of the picture. Thus, whilethe risks climate change poses to human health are increasingly recognised as having the potential to be extremely serious, these concerns have not received the breadth of attention or analysis they merit. There is a remit and, arguably, responsibility within the IPCC's mandate to analyse more thoroughly  the impacts of climate change on human health. The responsibility, however, neither begins nor ends with the IPCC. There is growing recognition that global climate change is an issue that binds together nominally distinct areas of international law and may create new international legal obligations. That is, climate change dialogue increasingly infiltrates discrete areas of international law and, in doing so, frequently uses the language of rights.

Public international law and, especially, international environmental law has been criticised for the fragmented nature of its jurisprudence and reach. Divisions between international legal regimes, for example, climate change, the oceans, biodiversity, heritage, trade, and human rights, often have overlapping mandates and areas of concern but lack the mechanisms necessary to address these issues in a comprehensive, joined-up manner. One of the most publicized examples of this trend is the perceived inconsistency between trade-related environmental measures used in many multilateral environmental agreements and the trade liberalisation measures established and upheld by the World Trade Organisation (WTO).16 Concern over the institutional intersection - and possible collision - between these regimes was serious enough to prompt the WTO to initiate a new series of negotiations designed to create guidance on how to reconcile trade and environmental regimes. Similar overlaps exist between environmental and human rights regimes. Treaty fragmentation creates false divisions between overlapping issues and forces fundamental challenges such as the relationship between climate change and trade, climate change and law of the sea, and climate change and health to the margins of international law, where there are no clear legal mechanisms for addressing the problem in a comprehensive. International law does not recognise a human right to a healthy environment. There is, however, a recognised human right to health. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, declares that 'everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of oneself and one's family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care'. The Constitution of  WHO confirms that 'the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being'.

Upholding the right to health is tied intricately to the environment in which people live. Environmental conditions are a primary contributing factor to human health and well-being. People cannot be healthy if the ecosystems in which they live are degraded and unsustainable. In this context, the relationship between climate change and human health is of central importance. As climate change impacts increasingly human health and well-being, the lines between recognised rights to health and evolving rights to a healthy environment intermingle.

Climate change will impact food and water supplies, alter disease risks, cause climatic variations and instabilities that create imbalances in the physical, chemical and biological components of ecological systems, and lead to biodiversity loss. Climate change is expected to cause great social and psychological disruptions amongst populations whose interactions with the natural environment and source of livelihood are disrupted. 

WHO is not the only international institution contemplating links between climate change and rights. In 2006, the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on behalf of 63 Inuit petitioners. The petitions centred on the 'impact of global warming on the Inuit and other vulnerable communities in the Americas and the implication of these impacts for human rights'.

On 5 March 2007, Sheila Watt-Cloultier, an Inuit petitioner and a Nobel Prize nominee; CIEL Senior Attorney, Donald Goldberg; and Earthjustice Managing Attorney, Martin Wagner; gave testimony before the Commission.37 The three witnesses used their testimony to create a full picture of the physical, cultural and legal links between climate change and human rights in the hopes of creating tangible and, ultimately, enforceable links between international human rights law, international environmental law and global climate change .  In the wake of this requested testimony, the IACHR has the opportunity to be one of the first international institutions to address the question of how far existing norms of international law can go towards addressing the far-reaching physical, social, cultural and economic problems posed by global climate change.

Efforts are underway to establish links between climate change and recognised human rights. But the language of human rights ultimately may prove inadequate for encapsulating the problems posed by climate change. Human rights are grounded in the rights of individuals. In the context of climate change, individual rights are relevant but can only go part of the way to addressing the problem. Climate change lends itself better to concepts of collective rights. In the vein of the customary international law principle of 'good neighbourliness' and the English common law notion of 'breach of peace', the creation of a collective right based on the notion of common concern could bestow the global community as a whole with a duty of protection for the global commons. This type of right is unprecedented and raises valid questions of standing, harm, causation and redressability.

The discussion thus far leads us to three critical questions:

-  Why are the human health dimensions of climate change relatively neglected in the mainstream scientific, legal and political climate change debate?

- Are our existing international institutions too fragmented to address effectively the links between climate change and environmental, development and social issues?

- Does the language of rights provide an appropriate mechanism for addressing the links between climate change and human well-being and, if so, do we need a new category of rights to do so?

These questions are central to the climate change and human health debate. The links between climate change and human health highlight the need in international environmental law, but also in international law more broadly, to analyse mechanisms for addressing linkages between ecological and social vulnerabilities and between international environmental, human rights, and economic law. The issue also draws attention to the on-going debate over the relationship between environmental protection and human rights. Indeed, it is worth noting that many of the concerns expressed above regarding the right to a healthy environment go beyond fears of the impacts of climate change. They also raise issues about our right to be protected from the accumulation of pollutants in our bodies, to uncontaminated food, and having access to coastal environments and to green space within our cities to facilitate healthy living. These and other aspects of the environment demonstrably affect our health. The impacts of climate change on human health can neither be adequately addressed in the legal forum of the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol, nor can they be dealt with without first understanding the links between climate change and human rights. These tensions draw attention to the urgent need to develop systems of true global governance that recognise and respond to the inter-linkages between nominally distinct areas of international law and policy.

To inform the legal and political debate, lawyers and politicians must rely on scientific and technological experts to undertake extensive analysis of the evidence relating to the past, present and future impacts of climate change (and other anthropogenic changes in the environment including pollution) on human health and well-being. Such research will help create a balanced overview of the nature of threats and best estimates of when and where the threats will be felt, and will help to identify scientific and political measures designed to mitigate or adapt to climate-related health threats.

There is little doubt that, just as we have atmospheric and economic tipping points for climate change, so do we also have human health tipping points. From increases in water-borne diseases, to air quality related illnesses, to collapses in aquaculture and agricultural productivity leading to malnutrition, social and physical breakdown, climate change poses unparalleled human health threats. It is imperative that we intensify efforts both to evaluate and to raise the profile of these threats, not only in the scientific community but also in the political and legal communities. 

* Michael Depledge is  Keeley Visiting Fellow at Wadham College, University of Oxford and Chair of Environment and Human Health at Peninsula Medical School, Universities of Exeter and Plymouth.

** Cinnamon Carlarne is Woods Research Fellow in Environmental Law,Wadham College and Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford.