In the contemporary international community, climate change has escalated beyond mere extreme weather events or environmental issues into the most severe human rights crisis that fundamentally threatens human survival and dignity. Global damages cause...
In the contemporary international community, climate change has escalated beyond mere extreme weather events or environmental issues into the most severe human rights crisis that fundamentally threatens human survival and dignity. Global damages caused by climate change, such as heatwaves, sea-level rise, and ecosystem destruction, directly threaten universal human rights guaranteed by international human rights treaties, including the rights to life, health, housing, and food. However, the international community's response to climate change has predominantly relied on the traditional framework of international environmental law and treaties, ranging from the UNFCCC to the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. While the current Paris Agreement regime has succeeded in eliciting universal participation by adopting a bottom-up approach in which all Parties voluntarily submit their Nationally Determined Contributions, it bears critical systemic and structural limitations: the absence of effective enforcement mechanisms to achieve mitigation targets and the non-punitive and facilitative nature of the Global Stocktake.
Accordingly, this study focuses on the Human Rights-Based Approach (HRBA) as an alternative to overcome the limitations of traditional environmental treaty law. The core objective of this study is to reconstruct State obligations in the face of the unprecedented climate disaster through the doctrinal framework of international human rights law, and to establish a normative foundation to hold States and corporations accountable through judicial review.
This study examines the process by which traditional international environmental law principles, such as the No-harm Rule and the Precautionary Principle, are integrated into the international human rights law system and evolve into substantive State obligations for individual citizens. The State's climate human rights obligations are specified into the tripartite framework of international human rights law: the obligations to respect, protect, and fulfil. States bear not only the negative obligation to respect by restraining reckless emissions resulting from the exercise of public authority, but also the positive obligation to protect by defending individuals from emissions by non-state actors, such as fossil fuel companies. Furthermore, due to the transboundary nature of climate damage, the concept of jurisdiction expands to a basis of 'effective control over the source of emissions', establishing Extraterritorial Obligations towards nationals of other States. The study clarifies that 'due diligence' under customary international law operates as the core standard of review for holding such responsibility.
This study empirically analyzes the judicial evolution in which international and domestic judicial bodies subsume the climate crisis under the human rights framework to hold States accountable. At the international level, through the 2024 International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and 2025 International Court of Justice Advisory Opinions, the study confirms the jurisprudence that climate treaties and human rights covenants are complementary, and that State responsibility arises when there is a lack of 'due diligence' based on the best available science. At the domestic level, it examines how the State's obligation to protect human rights functions as a standard for domestic judicial review, analyzing the Urgenda judgment in the Netherlands and the decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court. In particular, by analyzing the 2024 decision of constitutional nonconformity by the Constitutional Court of Korea in the climate litigation, it highlights the significant legal achievement that an unfair allocation of the remaining Carbon Budget violates the fundamental rights of future generations and breaches the principle of prohibition of insufficient protection.
Based on this normative evolution and judicial achievements, this study proposes concrete and practical legal and policy enhancement measures for the realization of Climate Justice in three dimensions.
First, to overcome the soft-law limitations of the Paris Agreement, human rights-based control over the NDCs system must be strengthened. It is proposed that the 'principle of non-regression' in NDCs should not remain a mere political declaration but be combined with the human rights principle of prohibition of insufficient protection to serve as a target for judicial review. Additionally, Human Rights Impact Assessments should be mandatorily integrated into the GST process.
Second, this study addresses the need to ensure the legal status of Climate Migrants, who are currently in a legal blind spot. Moving beyond the limitations of the traditional 1951 Refugee Convention, this study establishes the legal logic to expand the application of the customary international law principle of non-refoulement to victims of the climate crisis, and ultimately urges the development of an independent international treaty framework that can encompass them.
Third, the study emphasizes strengthening corporate responsibility to respect human rights and the State's duty to regulate. By expanding the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights into the climate context, it is necessary to codify the obligation of 'Climate Human Rights Due Diligence' for fossil fuel and high-emission private companies in domestic and international law, and to enact substantive legislative measures allowing the State to actively sanction and supervise non-compliant corporations.
In conclusion, responding to climate change is no longer merely a political or economic environmental policy area left to the broad margin of appreciation of the State. Rather, it is the execution of the most core and urgent 'duty to protect human rights' bestowed upon the State by constitutions and international human rights treaties. This study holds academic and practical significance in that it reconceptualizes the abstract principles of international environmental law into concrete justiciable rights and obligations through the lens of international human rights law, thereby proposing international legal alternatives to fill the normative gap in the current climate regime and fully guarantee the fundamental rights of present and future generations.