Planetary Justice, Human Rights and the ECHR: Advancing Alternative Onto-Epistemologies to Face Climate-Related Challenges

Summary

ABSTRACT

Injustices driven by climate change as a result of human ecological destructive activities have become of a planetary level, impacting on the rights of present and future generations, humans and non-humans. The analysis of human rights law through the lens of planetary justice, a conceptual framework which demands an expanded vision of justice beyond borders, across generations, and for non-humans, reiterates the inability of existing human rights law to deal with the intertemporal and interspecies dimensions of climatic harms. This contribution evaluates developments in the context of the Council of Europe (CoE), including the filing of the first climate cases before the European Court of Human Rights, and the push for the recognition of the right to a healthy environment. In doing so, it argues that, despite these steps forward, human rights law remains inefficient to address intergenerational dimensions of justice in the context of climate change . As an attempt to overcome intrinsic obstacles of human rights law deriving from its Western orientation, the contribution explores the potential of informing the interpretation of human rights norms with alternative onto-epistemologies, to ultimately pollinate human rights with alternative ways of thinking. This may provide a way to navigate the unprecedented challenges posed, by climate change, to the human rights legal framework.

INTRODUCTION

Western predatory models and patterns of domination amongst humans, nonhumans and the environment continue today, and result in socio-ecological injustices and inequalities at the global level, affecting human and non-human entities’ rights, both in present and future times. Environmental degradation is the major result of the historic exploitation and subordination that characterised colonial practices.

Inexorable rhythms of unsustainable consumption, masked under the illusory and misleading label of ‘sustainable development’,

exacerbate systemic injustices and inequalities, and increase the vulnerability and future exposure of humans and ecosystems to climatic harms, as made clear by the recently released Synthesis Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC ) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6).