Thuresday 3 August 2023
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Open seminar | Human rights and climate change
| Thursday 03.08.2023
| 12.00 (GMT +2)
| Join Zoom Meeting: :
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86085065676?pwd=NDRxdXBhcXZkTFRhSjM3VVdPU21tQT09
| Passcode: 030823
| Watch live on our YouTube channel
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Program
Program
12.00- 12.10
Registration
12.10- 12.20
Welcome – Introductory remarks
Dr. Asterios Tsioumanis
12.20- 12.35
Climate and human rights | Video Interview
Dr. Annalisa Savaresi
12.35- 12.50
Climate and human rights | Video Interview
Professor Saleemul Huq
12.50- 13.05
Human rights and climate change. Legal and policy framework.
Chris Spence
13.05- 13.40
Climate change and human rights. Existing power imbalances and inequalities.
Dr. Kiara Worth
13.40- 13.50
Discussion
13.50- 14.00
Closing remarks
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Speakers:
Chris Spence (MA Hons) examines the legal and policy framework on climate change and human rights, including recent developments such as the UN General Assembly’s recognition in July 2022 of the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment (A/76/L.75 ).
Chris is an adviser and consultant on climate change and sustainable development to several organizations, including the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), European Capacity Building Initiative (ecbi), and Oxford Climate Policy group. He has held leadership roles at environmental non-profits in San Francisco and New York, as well as consulting for IUCN, UNDP, the UNFCCC (UN Climate Secretariat) and various other organizations. An award-winning writer, Chris has been following the UN climate negotiations since COP 4 in 1998, primarily as a writer and team leader for the Earth Negotiations Bulletin.
Dr. Kiara Worth will be exploring how climate change exacerbates existing power imbalances and inequalities, and what this means for the protection of human rights.
Kiara Worth is a photographer and storyteller who has been documenting the global negotiations on environment and development with the UN for nearly a decade, focusing on climate change, sustainable development, and chemicals management, among other topics. With a PhD in Political Science, Kiara has a particular interest in how power dynamics influence the decisions made for sustainability and uses her photography to capture these moments at a global scale.
Dr. Annalisa Savaresi, Professor of International Environmental Law, University of Eastern Finland and
Professor Saleemul Huq, Director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD)
will also contribute to the seminar (video interviews)
Project coordinator Asterios Tsioumanis (PhD, MSc), TIESS, will facilitate the open seminar providing introductory remarks.
Asterios has an academic background in agricultural and environmental economics, with his doctorate thesis, awarded in 2004 by the Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, focusing on public perceptions towards applications of modern biotechnology, including genetically modified food. As a writer for the Earth Negotiations Bulletin, he has followed closely developments in international environmental policy for the past decade.
Seminar
The seminar will be held in a hybrid format in-person and online (via Zoom). A limited number of invitations will be issued for in-person participants, following COVID-19-related restrictions.
Online participation requires no prior registration. The seminar will be held in English. A report including key messages as well as all project’s deliverables will be translated in Greek in the project’s website.
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Project
The Transdisciplinary Institute for Environmental and Social Studies (TIESS), in collaboration with a group of academic researchers, was successful to its application for a Jean Monnet grant to analyze and study environmental rights under the title “Human rights and the environment in the EU: Towards an inclusive debate”. The three-year project addresses various aspects of the concept of environmental rights, and aims to add to the ongoing discussion, following the recognition of the “right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment as a human right that is important for the enjoyment of human rights” (UN Human Rights Council Resolution 48/13).
The project is divided in five thematic areas, which will be addressed in separate seminars. Following the previous three seminars, this fourth seminar will try to link human rights and climate change in order to offer additional focus on the interrelationship between environmental degradation and the fulfillment of human rights.
Human rights and climate change (backround)
Almost thirteen years ago, the Human Rights Council adopted its first resolution on climate change and human rights, in which it underscored its concern that climate change poses an immediate and far-reaching threat to people and communities around the world and has implications for the full enjoyment of human rights.
Since then, a growing body of literature focuses on the issue, indicating that adverse effects of climate change have significant implications for the effective enjoyment of human rights, especially by those already vulnerable. The importance of a human rights perspective on climate action has been repeatedly emphasized in multilateral fora.
During the pivotal conference of the parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris in 2015, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights emphasized that urgent action to combat climate change is essential to satisfy the duties of states under human rights law. The subsequent Paris Agreement, one in which the European Union played a catalytic role during the negotiations, explicitly refers to human rights in its preamble. “Parties should, when taking action to address climate change, respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights, the rights to health, the rights of indigenous peoples, local communities, migrants, children, persons with disabilities and people in vulnerable situations and the right to development, as well as gender equality, empower of women and intergenerational equity”.
Given the strategic role that the EU played in negotiating and agreeing the Paris Agreement, the European long-term strategy for a modern, climate neutral economy, as expressed in the long-term vision document “A Clean Planet for All”, which provides the framework for the European Union’s climate strategy to 2050 is in line with the Paris Agreement.
The document warns that climate change could “have severe consequences on the productivity of Europe’s economy, infrastructure, ability to produce food, public health, biodiversity and political stability”. It further establishes the links with the enjoyment of basic rights, stating that climate change “could undermine security and prosperity in the broadest sense, damaging economic, food, water and energy systems, and in turn trigger further conflicts and migratory pressures”.
This section of the project offers an additional opportunity for increased focus on the intersection between climate change and human rights.
Visit our website: https://environmentalrights.eu/
Contact: environmentalrights2021@gmail.com
For more information on TIESS see our activities and seminars.
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Open seminar | Human rights and the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity
| Wednesday 02.11.2022
| 4.30 p.m. (GMT +2)
| Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86025587016?pwd=WUN6dTVQSDFvREJFT3NlZW5vMWdPZz09
| Passcode: 021122
| Watch live on our YouTube channel
Nicole Schabus (LLM, MBA) will present about the involvement of Indigenous Peoples in international environmental and human rights negotiations and how the rights and knowledge of Indigenous Peoples are protected under the respective frameworks.
Nicole is a law professor at Thompson Rivers University, in Secwepemc’ulecw the territory of the Secwepemc People, in the Interior of what is now known as British Columbia, Canada. She has worked with Indigenous Peoples in the Interior and across Canada and the Americas, including by supporting them with making international submissions to international human rights bodies. She has been following international environmental negotiations for more than 20 years, as a writer for Earth Negotiations Bulletin.
Georgina Catacora-Vargas (Ph.D., MSc.) will address the relationship between biodiversity and human rights realization, illustrating how biodiversity loss, and conversely, biodiversity conservation and sustainable use, contribute to the promotion, protection, and fulfillment of rights, particularly for those in vulnerable situations.
Georgina holds a Ph.D. in Agroecology and has over ten years of experience in biodiversity, genetic resources, and biosafety of modern biotechnology policy making. Her scholar research is transdisciplinary and focuses on socioeconomic and socioecological systems related to food and agriculture, with a gender and human rights-based approach. Inspired by her work in peasant rights, she is currently a professor at an Academic Peasant Unit of the Bolivian Catholic University. Georgina is also the president of the Latin American Scientific Society of Agroecology (SOCLA).
Elsa Tsioumani (PhD, LL.M/DEA) will facilitate the open seminar providing introductory remarks.
Elsa is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at the School of International Studies in the University of Trento in Italy. She is an international environmental lawyer with an extensive publication record on biodiversity governance, human rights, and emerging technologies. She has been following intergovernmental negotiations on the environment for more than 20 years, as a writer for Earth Negotiations Bulletin, and collaborates with the project at TIESS.
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Program
4.20- 4.30
Registration
4.30- 4.40
Welcome – Introductory remarks
Elsa Tsioumani, Facilitator – Transdisciplinary Institute for Environmental and Social Studies – TIESS
4.40- 5.00
Protection of Indigenous Peoples rights and knowledge in international environmental and human rights negotiations.
Nicole Schabus
5.00- 5.20
Biodiversity conservation and sustainable use. Protection, promotion, and fulfillment of rights, particularly for those in vulnerable situations.
Georgina Catacora-Vargas
5.20- 5.40
Discussion
5.40- 6.00
Closing remarks
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Seminar
The seminar will be held in a hybrid format in-person and online (via Zoom). A limited number of invitations will be issued for in-person participants, following COVID-19-related restrictions.
Online participation requires no prior registration. The seminar will be held in English. A report including key messages as well as all project’s deliverables will be translated in Greek in the project’s website.
–
Project
The Transdisciplinary Institute for Environmental and Social Studies (TIESS), in collaboration with a group of academic researchers, was successful to its application for a Jean Monnet grant to analyze and study environmental rights under the title “Human rights and the environment in the EU: Towards an inclusive debate”. The three-year project addresses various aspects of the concept of environmental rights, and aims to add to the ongoing discussion, following the recognition of the “right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment as a human right that is important for the enjoyment of human rights” (UN Human Rights Council Resolution 48/13).
The project is divided in five thematic areas, which will be addressed in separate seminars. Following the introductory seminar under the theme “The fundamental right to a healthy and clean environment”, this second seminar will try to link the human rights framework with the biodiversity framework in order to ensure that biodiversity considerations will become more central in future development planning.
Human rights and the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity (backround)
Biological diversity refers to all living organisms and the interactions among them. The term not only covers species diversity, but also genetic and ecosystem diversity. It thus refers to the variety of different species, including plants, animals, fungi and micro-organisms; the variety of genes within all these species; and their different habitats.
Biodiversity, the outcome of billions of years of evolution, is shaped by natural processes and interactions between humans and the environment. It is the source of the essential resources and ecosystem services that sustain human life, including food production, purification of air and water, and climate stabilization. Biodiversity directly supports human activities, such as agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and tourism. It thus underpins human well-being and livelihoods, and the full enjoyment of an extensive range of human rights, including the rights to life, health, food, water and culture.
The rapid loss of biodiversity in our era, estimated to be 100 to 1000 times higher than the background species extinction rate, has important implications for human well-being and the realization of those rights. A human rights perspective allows the demonstration of the urgent need to safeguard biodiversity and contribute towards ensuring policy coherence.
The current Biodiversity Strategy of the European Union explicitly refers in its future vision (by 2050) to protection, restoration and valuation of biodiversity’s intrinsic value, as well as to its essential contribution to human well-being. Linking the human rights framework with the biodiversity framework will provide mutual benefits, ensuring foremostly that biodiversity considerations will become more central in future development planning. The outcomes of this section of the project will feed in the existing policy dialogue, informing relevant decision-making regarding, inter alia, the future targets and visions of the European Union’s biodiversity strategies.
Contact: environmentalrights2021@gmail.com
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