Accommodating human values in the climate regime

Abstract

The climate regime addresses one of the most important challenges facing humankind today. However, while the environmental and economic sides of the problem are well represented, it lacks the inclusion of social and human aspects. The human rights regime, in contrast, is a regime which has been established precisely to implement human values. This article ex-plains the problems of climate change in terms of human values and argues that some proce-dures from the human rights regime offer possibilities for improvement. It is submitted that through the inclusion of human rights instruments, such as individual communication, pro-gressive realisation and authoritative interpretation, the inclusion of human values into the climate regime will be facilitated. This article presents these instruments and discusses their potential for inclusion in the climate regime.

Keywords

• climate regime
• human rights procedures
• post-Kyoto regime
• human values
• sustainable de-velopment