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Contributions to the Report on Climate Change and Human Rights – a Safe Climate

Secretary General Visits Tebikenikora Community. This is an area that has been affected by climate change. People have moved away from their original habitat. When tide is high the sea water very easily overflows the surrounding land making it impossible for people to use this land. The land around this place presents a kind of desolate scenario. Shots of Community.

 

The Global Network for the Study of Human Rights and the Environment (GNHRE) in collaboration with our members and partners and in response to the Call for Inputs: Climate Change and Human Rights – a Safe Climate, presents this contribution to  Question 2 of the questionnaire regarding the specific obligations of the States to address the main drivers of climate change. This contribution features the inputs of Ana Lucía Maya-Aguirre and Héctor Herrera-Santoyo of the Observatory for the Marine and Coastal Governance (Colombia), Dr. Josh Gellers of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration of the University of North Florida (U.S.), Dr Kirsten Davies, Professor at Macquarie Law School of Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia); Dr. Anna Grear, Professor of Law and Theory, School of Law and Politics, Cardiff University (Cardiff, Wales); Dr Tom Kerns, Director, Environment and Human Rights Advisory; Steering Group, Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal Session on Human Rights, Fracking and Climate Change.

The first part addresses the critical need to recognize the relation among climate justice, the enjoyment of human rights, the protection of coastal communities, and the need to increase cooperation with and among small island countries (which we call “big ocean States”). The second part of this submission derives from The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) Session on Human Rights, Fracking and Climate Change Advisory Opinion released on April 12, 2019; it summarizes those portions of the Advisory Opinion relevant to States’ obligation to protect against climate change.

The full submission is available at this link. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1A22WCFjBxhWYnZ8cvIOJYvcKekB1132_/view

Feature image:  Island Nation of Kiribati affected by Climate Change (UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe)

Dina Lupin

By Dina Lupin

Dina Lupin is the Director of the GNHRE and a Lecturer at the School of Law at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdon. Dina is an affiliated researcher in the project “Giving groups a proper say”, supported by the Austrian Science Fund and hosted at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Vienna. Dina‘s current research is on silencing and epistemic injustice in the context of consultation processes with Indigenous peoples and her latest article on this subject can be found here. In 2020, Dina’s book, “Human Dignity and the Adjudication of Environmental Rights” was published with Edward Elgar Press.

Previously Dina worked as a Post-doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Law of the University of Tilburg researching civil society organisations working on sustainable development in Ethiopia. You can read more about the research project here.

Dina was awarded her PhD in 2017 by the Department of Public and International Law at the University of Oslo. Her PhD was on the concept of human dignity in the context of environmental law and governance.

Dina completed her BA and LLB at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and her Master of Laws, with honours, at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Dina previously worked as a Senior Attorney at the Centre for Environmental Rights (cer.org.za) in Cape Town. At the Centre, Dina represented a range of communities and activists in their battles for more transparent, accountable environmental and water management in the mining sector. She worked on the
legal aspects of acid mine drainage, hydraulic fracturing and was
instrumental in the facilitation of a community activist network in the field of mining and environmental justice. Dina also led the Centre’s work on improving transparency in environmental governance. As a result of her work at the Centre, Dina was included in the 2013 list of 200 Young South Africans published by the Mail and Guardian .

Dina has also worked in the Mining and Natural Resources team at Webber Wentzel, a South African law firm.