The Nexus of Climate Change and Human Rights: An examination of how social, political, and environmental impacts of climate change jeopardize the protection of human rights in the African Sahel
Climate change is a threat multiplier by its driving forces of environmental stress and scarcity. In the developing world, countries are hit hardest and most frequently by the effects of climate change, such as severe floods, droughts, and desertification. In this thesis, I argue that existing models for the umbrella-term of climate-security underemphasize dimensions of human security through exclusion of HR violations linked to climate such as subjection to food/water stress, compromised health, displacement, and violent conflict. Therefore, the climate-security paradigm should be recast to pay closer attention to its consequences related to human rights protection, which I refer to as the climate change-human rights (CC-HR) nexus. Most models of the climate-security nexus identify the interconnectedness between these environmental impacts and conflict, including ongoing ethnic tensions, civil wars, and the rise of armed extremism. However, accelerating change in the environment also exacerbates pre-existing vulnerabilities, including rapid rises in population growth, poverty, and public health emergencies – all paired with chronic political instability and low rates of development. The outcome is the severe deterioration of human rights that reproduces itself through feedback loops within the conflict-scarcity cycle. Focusing on the Sahel region – and Niger, Burkina Faso, and Senegal, specifically – this thesis serves two primary functions: 1) Presents empirical evidence of the manifestations of the CC-HR nexus; and 2) Calls for such interlinkages to be addressed through more proactive, wholistic approaches, centered on human rights, which bind climate adaptation and conflict prevention together as a collective aim. Such approaches include development of cross-cutting multisectoral policies and building localized systems of resilience and early warning.
climate change, environmental scarcity, human rights, resource competition, conflict, human development, West Africa, Environmental Studies, International Relations
City University of New York - City College
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