Event Title: Human Rights-based Approach in Climate Action: Unlocking the ‘What,’ ‘Why,’ and ‘How’
Date and Time: Saturday 16 November, 10:15-11:15
Location: PCCB Hub
The Paris Agreement calls on all parties to ‘respect, promote and consider’ human rights when taking action on climate change. However, a lack of specialized knowledge and practical tools hampers effective implementation of human rights-based climate solutions.Considering the varieties of harm that people forced to leave their homes can be exposed to,climate-related human mobility is a context where a human rights-based approach is particularly pivotal.
As host of the Bridging Capacities, Climate and Migration Day at the Paris Committee on Capacity Building Hub, the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, in partnership with SwedBio, organized a capacity-building discussion to raiseawareness of practical tools and methodologies for integrating human rights principles into climate action.
SwedBio presented the Multi-Actor Dialogue process, which translates into practice human rights principles of participation, equality and free, prior and informed consent. SwedBio demonstrated how the methodology helps to promote knowledge exchange and equitable local engagement in decision-making on issues relating to climate action and biodiversity conservation and restoration.
RWI introduced the Framework for Integrating Human Rights and Gender Equality (FIRE) as a versatile tool for policy development and evaluation, research and education. FIRE consolidates international human rights standards and guidelines into an accessible six-dimensional framework accessible to actors who may not have a background in human rights law. Participants were introduced to a practical case study concerning planned relocation in response to increasing flood risk and were invited to explore key human rights dimensions using the FIRE framework as a guide.
Participants explored a variety of potential use cases for the methodologies, and also discussed challenges to the ambition of integrating human rights into climate action, focusing on power dynamics, inequalities, and perceptions of human rights as Western imports.
This event demonstrated that such human-rights centered capacity-building tools can help Parties and Non-Party Stakeholders working on climate-related human mobility to recognize context-specific challenges, enhance duty bearer accountability, ensure meaningful community participation, and integrate traditional and indigenous knowledge systems, and in turn, advance climate action that upholds dignity, equity, and justice for all—especially those most affected by the climate crisis.
