CLIMATE CHANGE AND HUMAN RIGHTS Although states have discretion to decide how to protect human rights against climate-related effects, taking into account their resource constraints and national contexts, there may be some minimum measures that would be required as a matter of international, regional, or domestic human rights law. These might include measures that are necessary to protect lives from imminent threats, such as early-warning systems and risk notification,135 which tie into the obligation to disclose information, discussed above; improvements to physical infrastructure to reduce the risk of floods or other hazards; emergency response plans; and the provision of disaster relief and humanitarian assistance in times of emergency.136 Some of the UN Special Rapporteurs have further expanded upon the measures that states should take to protect human rights in the context of climate-related disasters and slow-onset degradation. Some of the proposed measures include: • Urban Planning and Warning Systems: (1) Risk assessments in urban planning, rural development projects, and housing design (with a particular focus on vulnerable areas).137 (2) Establishing necessary infrastructure and services to prevent extreme weather events from becoming disasters.138 (3) Providing warning information to all neighborhoods to allow dwellers to seek protection and take risk reduction actions.139 (4) Providing access to “affordable and well-located land for the urban poor” in order to “avoid further unplanned settlement expansions” that contribute to climate change vulnerability.140 • Displacement and Resettlement: (1) Conducting risk assessments, providing public participation risk assessments, providing public participation opportunities, and ensuring that there are human rights safeguards for all programs to manage migration and displacement.141 (2) Ensuring adequate resettlement opportunities for those who are temporarily displaced by climate change-related disasters, and ensuring that “temporary relocation must last only as long as absolutely necessary and all displaced persons should have the right to return to their homes without discrimination.”142 (3) Ensuring that the UNFCCC and related climate change frameworks address “the nexus between the effects of climate change and displacement” and that the least developed countries are provided with technical assistance, financial resources and/or other enhancements to domestic capacity to cope with climate-related displacement.143 (4) Adhering to the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, which describe how human rights considerations should be incorporated into government actions to prevent and manage internal displacement.144 • Access to Food: (1) Addressing food shortages and price shocks that are caused or aggravated by climate related phenomena.145 (2) Developing social safety nets to ensure that those who are adversely affected by climate change (e.g., through displacement or loss of livelihoods) will have access to food.146 (ii) Domestic Mitigation Obligations States may also have an obligation to respond to the core causes of climate change – anthropogenic emissions of GHGs and the accumulation of GHGs in the atmosphere. The CESCR, for example, has stated that State Parties to the ICESCR should mitigate the effects of climate change in order to safeguard the economic, social and cultural 135 OHCHR (2009), supra note 71, at p. 78. 136 The CESCR has asserted that, to protect the right to health, parties to the ICESCR have a “joint and individual responsibility . . . to cooperate in providing disaster relief and humanitarian assistance in times of emergency, including assistance to refugees and internally displaced persons.” CESCR, General Comment No. 14, p. 40, UN Doc. E/C.12/2000/4 (Aug. 11, 2000). 137 Rolnik (2009), supra note 101, at ¶ 51. 138 Id. 139 Id. at p. 53. 140 Id. at p. 74. 141 Crépeau (2012), supra note 110, at 39, 73-76, 93. 142 Rolnik (2009), supra note 101, at 55. 143 Report of the Representative of the Secretary-General on the human rights of internally displaced persons, Walter Kälin, p. 84, U.N. Doc. A/HRC/13/21 (Jan. 5, 2010). 144 Report of the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons, Chaloka Beyani, ¶ 65, U.N. Doc. A/HRC/16/43 (Dec. 20, 2010). 145 Id. See also, De Schutter (2008), supra note 45. 146 Id. 22 T H E O B L I G AT I O N S O F G O V E R N M E N T S A N D P R I VAT E A C T O R S T O R E S P O N D T O T H E H U M A N R I G H T S I M P L I C AT I O N S O F C L I M AT E C H A N G E