Essex environmental rights experts to fore in climate change workshop

Essex will take centre-stage in a vital global debate later this week, with a two-day workshop featuring experts in human rights and climate change.

Our School of Law and Human Rights Centre will host a two day workshop, looking at Human Rights and Climate Change, with speakers including two United Nations Special Rapporteurs, past and present, and experts from the World Bank, NASA, our own University and academics based on three continents. 

The event, which starts on Thursday afternoon, will feature five panel discussions, conducted via Zoom, focusing on institutional understandings of the relationship between human rights and climate change, transitioning to a Low-Carbon Urban Environments, litigation in this area, and tensions in the relationship between human rights and climate change.

Anyone can view the panel discussion but, to do so, you must register beforehand.

Dr Stephen Turner, a member of the organising team and an expert on international environmental law, climate change, global environmental governance and corporate responsibility, said: “We are delighted to be able to hold this event and to host so many leading experts from around the world. We are particularly pleased that Professor John Knox, the former UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, will be joining us and also Dr David Boyd, the current UN Special Rapporteur on that mandate, will be speaking too.”

Responding to a need for interdisciplinary research in this field, the workshop has been developed by environmental rights specialists at Essex School of Law in collaboration with other universities. The Essex team are also developing a partnership with the Centre of Architecture and Sustainable Environments at Kent University.

Dr Stephen Turner said: “This workshop provides us with an important opportunity to work with experts in the law but also with those from other fields such as architecture, planning, development and government policy. It provides a great platform for the work that we are developing in this area.

“At the United Nations level, there has been recognition of the links between human rights and climate change for the last ten years. All the same, more work is needed to clarify the obligations that governments have.”