Future-proofing your human rights research: Climate change as a cross-cutting issue for human rights research

Description

Workshop description
Climate change is the pre-eminent threat to human and planetary health. Its impacts are already widespread and disruptive for many communities and are expected to worsen in the coming decades. Urgent action is needed:according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change the scale of (in)action until 2030 will determine our own future and that of human generations for hundreds, and likely thousands, of years to come.
Climate change impacts on human rights in two major ways. First, the necessary decarbonization of our societies will require very rapid and major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. These will entail deep transformations of societies implicating all human rights.
Second, the disruptive effects of climate change are increasingly physically visible and felt. The human rights impacts will be increasingly severe in the coming years, including for women, girls and vulnerable communities in the global South and the global North.
Climate change is thus a major factor for the universal enjoyment of human rights. Yet, the impacts of climate change on human rights are often still only studied by those who specifically research ‘climate change and human rights’.
If we do not view climate change as an underlying cross-cutting issue that affects all our human rights research, is our human rights research sufficiently ‘future proof’? How can we ensure our research is relevant in 2030, 2040 or 2050, in light of the climate crisis?

Specific questions for discussion:
• How does climate change impact the legal questions we ask, or the topics we research?
• How does climate change denial (including denial of severity and impact) affect our research, and what can
we do about it?
• How can we mainstream climate change into existing and planned human rights research. Is this necessary,
or even possible?

This event invites NNHRR members to actively reflect on their current research from a climate change perspective.
We will investigate human rights scholars’ academic responsibility to confront climate change more directly in their research. Why do scholars not address the climate crisis more head on?

Period	26-Sept-2023
Event type	Conference
Location	Groningen, NetherlandsShow on map
Degree of Recognition	National