C-EENRG Seminar: 'Equity and human rights in climate law'

C-EENRG will host another talk next week on 'Equity and human rights in climate law'. The talk is given by Dr Stephen Humphreys, of the LSE.

Although the profound ethical issues raised by climate change have been repeatedly articulated in discussions of climate policy and law, and often seem central to public debate, they appear so far to have had relatively little practical traction in shaping the emerging climate regime. In this paper I look closely at two salient terms of art in this domain: ‘equity’ and ‘human rights’. The inquiry is part definitional, part historical, and part legal. ‘Equity’ in particular, despite its apparent transparency, remains a relatively obscure term, given its rootedness in an arcane area of law. Bearing in mind the very many and varied climate matters to which this term can be and has been applied, on one hand, and its relative indeterminacy in climate law and policy today, on the other, I look back at some historical moments of its legal/philosophical articulation for a sense of its parameters and how they may be relevant to today’s climate debates. I then examine the stakes of articulating the same or similar climate-related concerns in the very different language of human rights. I do not here undertake a historical inquiry into the (well-known) genealogy of this register; rather I attempt to tease out whether and how this choice of terminology differs from, weakens or buttresses claims framed in terms of ‘equity’.

Dr Stephen Humphreys is an Associate Professor of International Law. He was formerly Research Director at the International Council on Human Rights Policy in Geneva, and, before that, Senior Officer at the Open Society Institute’s Justice Initiative in New York and Budapest. He has conducted policy work on climate change and in human rights in a variety of fora. His research interests include international legal and critical theory; rule of law; law and development; climate change; the laws of war; and transnational legal processes. He holds a PhD from Cambridge and a Master’s degree in law from SOAS. His publications include Theatre of the Rule of Law (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and the edited volume, Human Rights and Climate Change (Cambridge University Press, 2009). 

Coffee and biscuits will be available shortly after the talk. For further information, please refer to the attached poster.