Climate Adaptation and Human Rights: Potential Directions for Health Advocacy and Research
VIEWPOINT
Sandra Smiley and Michele Heisler
Climate change has numerous impacts on health, both current and projected.[1] These health impacts are disproportionately borne by people experiencing poverty, inequity, and marginalization.[2] Two synergistic and complementary strategies exist to address them: decreasing the carbon emissions driving climate change (mitigation) and implementing measures to minimize its negative consequences (adaptation).[3]
Yet, from a human rights perspective, adaptation is crucial. Resilient, accessible services and infrastructure are key to protecting the health of those most vulnerable to climate change. If the climate-health agenda continues to focus largely on mitigation—reducing the carbon footprint of existing services and infrastructure—it will benefit only those who already have access to the determinants of health.[6]
Now is a decisive time for adaptation, as countries set climate goals and design roadmaps to meet them.[7] Conducted through a human rights lens, health research can power advocacy to accelerate adaptation, and can help ensure that its outcomes are equitable. Informed by a review of scholarly and grey literature, we describe three emerging issue areas at the intersection of adaptation and health. Noting their human rights dimensions, we propose these issues as advocacy items for the climate-health agenda and as future subjects for health research.
Issue area 1: Lack of international legal protections for “climate migrants”
Experts predict that climate-related migration could increase substantially in the coming decades.[8] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has recognized safe and regular migration as a potential source of resilience for populations vulnerable to climate change.[9] Yet, under international refugee law, states are not obliged to offer protections to people migrating internationally due to environmental factors.[10]
Recently, human rights frameworks have been employed to secure such protections. A 2019 ruling by the UN Human Rights Committee on the asylum case of an i-Kiribati man, Ioane Teitiota, living in New Zealand affirmed that deporting an individual to a country facing environmental degradation could constitute a breach of the right to life.[11] In 2021, the Italian Corte Suprema di Cassazione cited this decision in Teitiota v. New Zealand when it upheld the appeal of a man facing return to the Niger Delta, finding that environmental conditions there threatened his right to life.[12]
The full potential of this novel application of human rights law remains to be seen. Health researchers can bolster the development of related jurisprudence by documenting the degree to which climate change places lives at risk and assisting jurists to establish these facts in cases. This research can also support broader advocacy for policy interventions that facilitate adaptation by removing barriers to safe and legal migration.[13]
Issue area 2: Inequitable distribution of the tools and technologies of adaptation
Climate change affects health differently and unequally within and across countries.[14] In large part, these inequities reflect disparities in access to the tools and technology necessary to adapt, including physical infrastructure, resources like energy, information, and intellectual property.[15] Such access disparities, in turn, further entrench inequities and perpetuate systems of discrimination and geographic segregation, risking scenarios of “climate apartheid”.[16]
Adaptation must correct for, rather than reinforce, current inequities, lest it replicate and amplify health disparities.[17] If human rights are not prioritized in domestic and global efforts to “scale up” adaptation solutions, then they will be sold to the highest bidder, as can be observed now with the construction of exclusive climate-resilient urban enclaves.[18]
Given the implications of adaptation efforts for health and human rights, their success should be evaluated using a health and human rights lens. Here, health researchers can play a role. To illustrate: in recent years, research and human rights advocacy has proliferated on access to energy services, including access to cooling, the demand for which is increasing as global temperatures rise.[19] However, considerable gaps in this evidence base remain, particularly as regards the health impacts of programs intended to address energy insecurity.[20] By assessing efforts to scale up adaptation solutions through the prism of health and human rights, researchers can help ensure that such initiatives protect the vulnerable and promote health equity.
Issue area 3: Climate change and colonial neglect
In locations where colonial neglect has produced weak public infrastructure, health systems struggle to cope with the needs generated by climate change. Joseph et al. (2020) write that decades of inadequate investment in Puerto Rico by the United States government made Hurricane Maria one of the worst disasters in the territory’s history, resulting in more than 4,600 deaths.[21] This phenomenon is not isolated to the United States. Redvers (2023) describes growing demands generated by climate change impacts on under-resourced health care systems in Canada’s northern Indigenous communities, leading to unmet needs.[22]
To enable adaptation to climate change, health researchers must continue to rigorously investigate the systemic neglect of colonial governments, and document its effects. Deployed using a human rights approach, health research can quantify unmet needs generated by the convergence of climate change and health systems weakened by colonial neglect. This could provide a basis for seeking redress from those responsible, supporting processes of accountability. Health research can also guide health system adaptation within, for, and by affected communities, indicating where investment is most needed to bolster resilience to the impacts of climate change.
Conclusion
Adaptation to climate change is crucial from health and human rights perspectives. To protect the lives and health of vulnerable people, it is essential that the climate-health agenda include a focus on adaptation. We have proposed three subjects for future advocacy and described broad recommendations for research to support it. Health research incorporating a human rights lens can drive the climate-health agenda forward, supporting advocacy for, and mainstreaming equity into, adaptation efforts.
Sandra Smiley, MSc, MPH, is a medical student at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. ssmiley@student.ubc.ca
Michele Heisler, MD, MPA, is medical director of Physicians for Human Rights and a professor of internal medicine and public health at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA.
[1] N. Watts, M. Amann, N. Arnell, et al., “The 2020 report of The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: responding to converging crises,” Lancet, 397/10269 (2021), pp. 129-170.
[2] IPCC, “Synthesis Report of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report.” (Geneva: IPCC, 2023).
[3] J. B. R. Matthews (ed.), “IPCC Annex I: Glossary,” in V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, H. O. Pörtner et al. (eds.) Global Warming of 1.5°C: IPCC Special Report on Impacts of Global Warming of 1.5°C above Pre-industrial Levels in Context of Strengthening Response to Climate Change, Sustainable Development, and Efforts to Eradicate Poverty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
[4] M. Romanello, C. D. Napoli, C. Green, et al., “The 2023 report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change: The imperative for a health-centred response in a world facing irreversible harms,” Lancet, 402/10419 (2023), pp. 2346-2394; UNEP, Adaptation Gap Report (Nairobi: United Nations Environment Programme, 2022).
[5] T. Viveros-Uehara, “Climate change and economic inequality: Are we responding to health injustices?” Health and Human Rights Journal, 25/2 (2023), pp. 191-197.
[6] Ibid.
[7] UNFCCC, “Global goal on adaptation.” (n.d.).
[8] C. McMichael, J. Barnett, and A. J. McMichael, “An ill wind? Climate change, migration, and health,” Environmental health perspectives, 120/5 (2012), pp. 646–654.
[9] IPCC (see note 2).
[10] UNHCR, “Climate Change, Natural Disasters and Human Displacement: A UNHCR Perspective.” (Geneva: UNHCR, 2009).
[11] UN Human Rights Committee, “Views adopted by the Committee under article 5 (4) of the Optional Protocol, concerning communication No. 2728/2016 * , ** , ***”, Ione Teitiota v. New Zealand, UN Doc. CCPR/C/127/D/2728/2016 (2020).
[12] F. Vona, “Environmental Disasters and Humanitarian Protection: A Fertile Ground for Litigating Climate Change and Human Rights in Italy?”, Italian Review on International and Comparative Law, 1/1 (2021), 146-148.
[13] IPCC (see note 2).
[14] Watts et al. (see note 1).
[15] P. Alston, Climate Change and Poverty, Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, UN Doc. A/HRC/41/39 (2019).
[16] J. L. Rice, J. Long, and A. Levenda, “Against climate apartheid: Confronting the persistent legacies of expendability for climate justice,” EPE: Nature and Space, 0/0 (2021), pp. 1-21.
[17] Alston (see note 15).
[18] Rice et al. (see note 16).
[19] L. Middlemiss, “Who is vulnerable to energy poverty in the Global North, and what is their experience?” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Energy and Environment, 11/6 (2022), e455; Human Rights Watch, “Protecting people from extreme heat” (July 21, 2022); International Energy Agency, “Keeping cool in a hotter world is using more energy, making efficiency more important than ever”, (21 July, 2023).
[20] T. Tang, and H. Kim, “Linking energy policy, energy insecurity, and health outcomes”, Frontiers in Sustainable Energy Policy, 2 (2023), 1231821.
[21] S. R. Joseph, C. Voyles, K. Williams, et al., “Colonial neglect and the right to health in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria,” American Journal of Public Health, 110/10 (2021), pp. 1512-1518.
[22] N. Redvers, “Communities in Northern Canada are feeling the health system implications of climate breakdown”, BMJ (2023), 383.