well as the broad tenets of the public trust doctrine38 and international law,39 the Philippine State is obligated to act to help reduce atmospheric CO2 to below 350 ppm by 2100 in order to avoid continued violations of fundamental human rights and to preserve a stable climate system.40 B. THE PHILIPPINE GOVERNMENT SHOULD SEEK NATURAL RESOURCE DAMAGES FROM THE CARBON MAJORS AND IMPLEMENT CARBON SEQUESTRATION PROJECTS In order to fulfill its sovereign public trust obligations, the Philippine government should seek Natural Resource Damages (NRDs) from the Carbon Majors for damages to the atmosphere and climate system. For example, under statutory law frameworks, Natural Resource Damages may be recoverable from a private party when statutorily protected natural resources have been harmed by a release of a hazardous substance that threatens human health and the environment.41 Natural resources must be restored to their pre-injury status, and in the absence of complete restoration by the entity (or entities) responsible for the damage, Natural Resource Damages will be sought by the government to fund restoration measures.42 Even in the absence of specific statutory authority, the core tenets of the public trust doctrine allow for Natural Resource Damages to be recovered for impairment to the atmosphere and the climate system, and for such damages to fund restoration of the public trust resources to a non-impaired state.43 Currently, the best available science indicates that atmospheric the lens of a human rights analysis of climate obligations and indicating that “the idea that states are essentially joint trustees of the earth’s atmosphere”). 38 For an initial introduction of the public trust doctrine, see Torres & Bellinger, Public Trust: Law’s DNA, at 288 (“The public trust doctrine is “inherent to humankind and merely secured by government.”); Blumm & Guthrie, Internationalizing the Public Trust Doctrine, at 750 (stating that the doctrine is approaching becoming a “general principle of international law”); Wood, Atmospheric Trust Litigation. 39 Numerous international legal principles, declarations, and laws assert that environmental rights are human rights. The first was the Stockholm Declaration adopted at the United Nations Conference of the Human Environment in 1972. Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm Declaration), U.N. Doc. A/Conf.48/14 2, 3 (1972), available at http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?documentid=97&articleid=1503. Subsequently, people were declared “entitled” to a healthy environment in the Rio Declaration. Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, U.N. Doc. A/Conf.151/26, 31 I.L.M. 874 (1992), available at http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?documentid=78&articleid=1163. The first binding international legal document to articulate a right to environmental health and safety is the 1981 African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. African [Banjul] Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, June 27, 1981, O.A.U. Doc. CABILEG/67/3 rev. 5, 21 I.L.M. 58, available at http://www.africaunion.org/officialdocuments/treaties_%20conventions_%20protocols/banjul%20charter.pdf; see also Svitlana Kravchenko, Environmental Rights in International Law: Explicitly Recognized or Creatively Interpreted, 7 Fla. A&M U. L. Rev.163, 163-180 (2012). 40 Exhibit A, ¶¶ 86, 102; see generally State Obligations Regarding Children’s Rights and Climate Change: Submission to UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (2016) [hereinafter Children’s Rights and Climate Change] available at https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/s/OCT-et-al-CRC-Submission.pdf. 41 For more information on Natural Resource Damages in the United States, see United States Environmental Protection Agency, Natural Resource Damages, https://www.epa.gov/superfund/natural-resource-damages (last visited on December 5, 2016); United States Environmental Protection Agency, Natural Resource Damages: A Primer, https://www.epa.gov/superfund/natural-resource-damages-primer (last visited Dec. 5, 2016). 42 Id. 43 Wood & Galpern, Atmospheric Recovery Litigation, at 292. Our Children’s Trust Amicus Curiae Brief 8