Right Against the Adverse Effects of Climate Change

Right Against the Adverse Effects of Climate Change

A Fundamental Human Right in the Anthropocene Era

Climate Change as a Rights Crisis

Climate change has moved beyond the realm of environmental science and policy into the core of constitutional and human rights law. Rising temperatures, extreme weather events, sea-level rise, biodiversity loss, and ecosystem collapse now directly threaten the most basic human entitlements—life, health, food, water, housing, livelihood, equality, and human dignity. These impacts are not abstract or future risks; they are present, measurable, and disproportionately borne by vulnerable populations such as indigenous communities, women, children, small farmers, coastal dwellers, and the urban poor.

The Right Against the Adverse Effects of Climate Change reflects an emerging legal doctrine that treats climate stability as a precondition for the meaningful enjoyment of fundamental rights. No longer a moral aspiration or policy goal, this right is increasingly recognized as legally enforceable, imposing binding obligations on states and, indirectly, on powerful private actors. It transforms climate governance from discretionary environmental management into a matter of constitutional duty and justice.

I. Conceptual Foundations: Why Climate Change Is a Human Rights Issue

A rights-based approach to climate change reshapes legal understanding in three decisive ways:

1. From policy choice to legal obligation
   When climate impacts threaten life, health, or livelihood, state inaction ceases to be a political decision and becomes a constitutional failure.

2. From aggregate emissions to human harm
   Human rights law centers individuals and communities, especially those least responsible for emissions yet most affected by climate impacts.

3. From aspirational targets to enforceable remedies
   Rights enable judicial scrutiny, accountability, and remedial action through courts and oversight institutions.

This approach recognizes that climate change interferes with the enjoyment of existing rights rather than creating an entirely new category of entitlements.

II. Scientific Foreseeability and Legal Responsibility

Climate science has conclusively established that:

• Global warming is primarily anthropogenic;

• Climate impacts are already occurring and intensifying;

• Specific harms—heatwaves, floods, droughts, food insecurity, disease spread—are foreseeable and quantifiable.

In law, foreseeability is central to responsibility. When harm is predictable and preventable, failure to act may amount to negligence or violation of fundamental rights. The increasing precision of climate attribution science strengthens claims that governments and major emitters knew, or ought to have known, the consequences of delayed or inadequate action.

III. International Recognition of the Right (2024–2025 Developments)

International Judicial Developments

In 2025, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion affirming that states have binding obligations under international law to prevent significant climate harm. The Court clarified that:

• The 1.5°C temperature goal reflects a legally relevant standard grounded in scientific necessity;

• States must exercise due diligence to prevent foreseeable climate damage;

• Failure to do so may constitute an internationally wrongful act, attracting responsibility including cessation, guarantees of non-repetition, and reparation.

Earlier, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea held that greenhouse gas emissions qualify as marine pollution, imposing duties on states to protect oceans from climate-induced degradation.

Human Rights Institutions

The UN Human Rights Council has explicitly linked climate change to the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, emphasizing its existential implications for human survival, particularly for coastal and island communities.

IV. Constitutional Recognition in India: A Landmark Shift

M.K. Ranjitsinh v. Union of India (2024–2025)

India has played a pivotal role in domesticating climate rights jurisprudence. In this landmark judgment, the Supreme Court of India explicitly recognized the right against the adverse effects of climate change as a fundamental right under the Constitution.

Constitutional Basis

• Article 21 (Right to Life): The Court reaffirmed that life with dignity is impossible in an ecologically destabilized environment.

• Article 14 (Right to Equality): Climate change disproportionately harms vulnerable groups, making climate protection integral to substantive equality.

Key Observations

• Climate change amplifies air pollution, heat stress, water scarcity, disease, and food insecurity.

• Renewable energy transition is a constitutional necessity, not merely a policy preference.

• Environmental protection and climate mitigation must be balanced, not pitted against each other.

While the case arose from the protection of the Great Indian Bustard, the Court expanded its reasoning to recognize climate stability as essential to fundamental rights, marking the first explicit constitutional articulation of this right in India.

V. Comparative Global Jurisprudence

Courts across jurisdictions have increasingly treated climate inaction as rights violations:

• The European Court of Human Rights held that inadequate climate mitigation can violate the right to private and family life.

• Constitutional courts in Latin America have recognized a right to a “stable climate” grounded in intergenerational equity.

• Youth-led litigation globally emphasizes that present inaction unlawfully burdens future generations.

Together, these decisions indicate an emerging global consensus that climate change is justiciable under human rights law.

VI. Content of the Right Against Adverse Climate Effects

This right derives from and reinforces multiple established rights:

• Right to life and personal security

• Right to health

• Right to adequate housing

• Right to food and water

• Cultural and indigenous rights

• Procedural rights (information, participation, remedies)

It imposes:

• Negative obligations (to refrain from actions causing climate harm), and

• Positive obligations (to prevent, mitigate, adapt, and remedy climate impacts).

VII. Obligations of States and Corporations

State Obligations

• Mitigation through emissions reduction;

• Adaptation through resilient infrastructure and disaster preparedness;

• Protection of vulnerable populations;

• Regulation of private actors;

• International cooperation and climate finance.

Corporate Responsibility

Large corporations, particularly in fossil fuels and finance, increasingly face duties to:

• Respect human rights;

• Disclose climate risks;

• Avoid contributing to foreseeable climate harm.

Climate risk is now recognized as legal, financial, and fiduciary risk.

VIII. Remedies and Enforcement

Rights-based climate claims may seek:

• Judicial directions to strengthen climate targets;

• Mandatory implementation of climate policies;

• Monitoring and compliance mechanisms;

• Compensation for loss of life, property, or livelihood;

• Protection and rehabilitation of displaced communities.

Courts often prefer structural remedies, recognizing the systemic nature of climate harm.

IX. Challenges in Enforcement

Despite doctrinal progress, enforcement faces obstacles:

• Causation and attribution complexities;

• Federal and institutional coordination issues;

• Judicial reluctance in policy-heavy domains;

• Global inequities between high and low emitters.

Courts increasingly address these challenges through probabilistic reasoning, precautionary principles, and rights-based balancing.

X. Future Trajectory: Toward Climate Constitutionalism

The trajectory is clear:

• Climate litigation will expand;

• Human rights language will increasingly shape climate governance;

• Courts will refine doctrines of duty, responsibility, and remedy;

• Climate justice will move from the margins to the center of constitutional law.

Rights as the Foundation of Climate Justice

The Right Against the Adverse Effects of Climate Change represents a paradigm shift in legal thought. It affirms that environmental collapse is not merely an ecological failure but a constitutional and human rights violation. By grounding climate action in dignity, equality, and life itself, this right transforms climate governance from aspiration to obligation.

In an era of accelerating climate instability, recognizing and enforcing this right is not optional—it is essential to preserving the constitutional promise of justice, liberty, and human dignity for present and future generations.