Human Rights and Climate Change: An approach that puts people in the forefront of the debate

This paper addresses the human rights dimensions of climate change. It maps the landscape, explains the added value that a human rights lens brings to the discussions and suggests some ways that the Commonwealth and others can bring this lens to the negotiating table.

It does so in the context of the emergence of a new discourse at the United Nations that has begun to connect human rights and climate change, and against the background of preparations for the fifteenth UN Climate Change Conference (COP15) to be held in Copenhagen, 7-18 December 2009.