Professor Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, will deliver a public lecture this week, entitled: ‘What does climate change really have to do with human rights?’.

The event will take place on Thursday, 19 December, from 12.30pm to 2pm in the Distillery Building, Church Street, Dublin 7, and is co-hosted by the Irish Centre for Human Rights, the Ryan Institute (NUI Galway), and the Human Rights Committee, Bar of Ireland.

Launch

This event marks the launch, in Dublin, of the International Human Rights Law Clinic at NUI Galway’s Irish Centre for Human Rights, led by Dr Maeve O’Rourke.

The lecture will be chaired by the Chief Justice Frank Clarke, and will draw from Prof Alston’s recent UN report on climate change and human rights.

Prof Alston said: “Climate change is going to affect all of us, and dramatically, but you’d never know that from the reaction of the legal and human-rights communities.”

In his talk, he will address the threats posed by climate change to the future of human rights -- and the risk that progress made on human rights, poverty reduction and democratic governance will be undone.

Policy changes

He will highlight the need for policy and legislative changes.

Prof Siobhán Mullally (Director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights at NUI Galway) said: “Climate change threatens human rights, including the most fundamental of rights, the right to life.”

Prof Charles Spillane (Director of the Ryan Institute at NUI Galway) said: “It has been estimated that the richest 10% of the world’s population are responsible for almost half of total lifestyle-consumption emissions.

"At the other end of the income scale, the poorest 50% of people on the planet are responsible for only 10% of total lifestyle-consumption emissions.

Marginalised 

“While contributing the least to causing the climate-change problem, it is the poorest and marginalised in our societies that are the most vulnerable to climate-change impacts and shocks.”

The event is free, but places must be reserved on https://bit.ly/2qHPoNO.

The report by UN Special Rapporteur Prof Alston on climate change and poverty can be accessed at https://bit.ly/2PzpQKY, while a summary is available at https://bit.ly/38orE1Y.

Extreme poverty

Prof Alston was appointed UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights in June 2014, by the Human Rights Council.

He is John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law at New York University School of Law.