Seminar & Profile Area networking: Human rights, climate change, and just transition

Human rights law has become central to the green transition. On the one hand, rights-based climate change litigation has been used to push states and corporations towards greater mitigation ambition, with landmark court cases such as Urgenda and KlimaSeniorinnen establishing that inadequate climate change law and policy can violate human rights. On the other hand, human rights law is increasingly invoked to challenge the justice of climate change action itself, particularly where renewable energy, mining, and other transition projects affect the livelihoods and cultural practices of Indigenous peoples and rural communities. This emerging field of rights-based just transition litigation raises difficult questions about how climate change action is approved, designed, and implemented, rather than whether that action is necessary. 

This presentation examines the relationship between these two aspects of human rights law. It argues that rights-based litigation can operate as a double-edged sword in the climate change context: climate change litigation can accelerate mitigation, while the just transition litigation can expose and potentially halt unjust transition measures. It seeks to understand the links between these types of litigation, framing them as interconnected indications of governance failure in the climate change context. Where states fail to adopt ambitious climate change policy, litigation is triggered to drive action; where states approve transition projects without meaningful participation and consent, litigation is triggered to challenge injustice. Understanding their interaction is therefore essential for designing climate change governance that is both rapid and just. A just transition requires not only more climate action, but climate action that is ambitious, fair, and grounded in human rights.

 Limited seats, please register by 22/9 using this registration form. 

Learn more about the Lund University Profile Areas:Human Rights and Nature-based future solutions