CLIMATE CHANGE AND HUMAN RIGHTS rights of their citizens (although it has not expressly characterized this as an obligation).147 The former Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing has also asserted that “Human rights standards require all countries to seek to reduce their harmful emissions to the global atmosphere, with a view to reducing their negative effect on the enjoyment of human rights.”148 The international human rights courts have not yet addressed the nature of a state’s obligations to mitigate GHG emissions, but there is at least one domestic case requiring a national government to accelerate its emission reduction efforts in order to fulfill a duty of care to its citizens,149 and another requiring the government to implement its national climate change policy (which included mitigation objectives) in order to protect the fundamental rights of its citizens.150 In addition, cases alleging a violation of fundamental rights as a result of governmental inaction on climate change have been filed in the United States151 and Belgium.152 In this context, questions of causation are relevant. Many countries have made and are making relatively small contributions to climate change; their GHG emissions reductions will not significantly impact their peoples’ enjoyment of human rights. By contrast, emissions reductions by the U.S., China, the E.U. and other major emitters matter a great deal.153 The principles and goals set forth in the UNFCCC provide a useful frame for these mitigation obligations. For one thing, the treaty recognizes that all states share a duty to “prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the atmosphere” as necessary to “allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.”154 In the 2010 Cancun Agreements, the COP agreed that, to achieve this goal, they must “hold the increase in global average temperature below 2°C e above pre-industrial levels,” and that they should consider strengthening this long-term goal so as to hold the global average temperature increase to 1.5°C.155 Many UN independent experts and other stakeholders feel that to protect fundamental human rights, it will be necessary to keep global warming well below the 2°C goal.156 Such an approach would accord with some of the core principles of many international environmental instruments (including the UNFCCC), such as the precautionary principle157 and intergenerational equity.158 The UNFCCC also provides insight on how to allocate the responsibility for achieving this target. Under the principle of common-but-differentiated responsibilities, developed countries must take the lead in ensuring that we remain within the 2°C global warming goal established under the UNFCCC.159 However, developing countries also have an 147 E.g., in Statement on the World Food Crisis, CESCR pressed State parties to adopt “strategies to combat global climate change that do not negatively affect the right to adequate food and freedom from hunger, but rather promote sustainable agriculture, as required by article 2 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.” In Concluding Observations to Australia, it encouraged Australia “to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and to take all the necessary and adequate measures to mitigate the adverse consequences of climate change, impacting the right to food and the right to water for indigenous peoples.” 148 Rolnik (2009), supra note 101, at 45. 149 Urgenda decision, supra note 131. 150 Ashgar Leghari, supra note 131. 151 Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief at 85, Kelsey Cascadia Rose Juliana, Xiuhtezcatl Tonatiuh M. Et Al. v. United States, Barack Obama et al., No. 6:15-cv-01517-TC (D. Or. Aug. 12, 2015). This complaint and other recent cases in the U.S. also allege that federal and state governments have violated their public trust obligation by failing to adequately mitigate the GHG emissions that contribute to climate change. See, e.g., Foster v. Washington Department of Ecology, No. 14-2-25295-1 (Wash Super. Ct., filed Sept. 2014); Juliana v. United States, No. 6:15-cv-01517 (D.Or., filed Aug. 2015). Although these cases have not yet been successful at compelling government action, they have resulted in at least one decision holding that the state government (New Mexico) had a public trust responsibility to protect the atmosphere (but the court also found that this responsibility had been met through compliance with the state air quality act). Sanders-Reed v. Martinez, 2015-NMCA-063, 350 P.3d 1221 (March 12, 2015). Although these cases did not involve human rights claims, there is a clear relationship between governments’ public trust obligations—which require the maintenance and preservation of common environmental resources for the benefit of current and future generations—and governments’ human rights obligations. See Burns H. Weston & David Bollier, Green Governance – Ecological Survival, Human Rights, and the Law of the Commons (Cambridge University Press 2013); David Takacs, The Public Trust Doctrine, Environmental Human Rights, and the Future of Private Property, 16 NYU Envtl. L.J. 711 (2008). 152 Summons to the Ministers of Flanders, Wallonia, Brussels, and the Federal State of Belgium (April 27, 2015), available at http://klimaatzaak.eu/wp-content/ uploads/2015/04/Dagvaarding.pdf. 153 Knox (2009), supra note 58, at 10-11. 154 UNFCCC Art. 2. 155 Cancun Agreements (2011), supra note 86, at ¶ 5. 156 See, e.g., A New Climate Change Agreement Must Include Human Rights Protections for All: An Open Letter from Special Procedures Mandate-holders of the Human Rights Council to the State Parties to the UNFCCC on the occasion of the meeting of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for enhanced Action in Bonn, 20-25 October 2014 (Oct. 17, 2014); Press Release, Climate Vulnerable Forum, 20 Nations Call to Strengthen 2 Degrees Climate Goal (May 1, 2015), http://www.thecvf.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/cvfpressrelease010515.pdf. 157 Hartmut Grassl & Bert Metz, Climate Change: Science and the Precautionary Principle, Ch. 14 in Precautionary principle: Late Lessons from Early Warnings: Science, Precaution, Innovation, EEA Report No 1/2013. 158 Edward Cameron et al., Climate Justice: Equity and Justice Informing a New Climate Agreement, World Resources Institute and Mary Robinson Foundation Working Paper (Sept. 2013). 159 UNFCCC Art. 3(1). 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