Development, Climate Change and Human Rights from the Margins to the Mainstream?
Since 2005, a growing number of vulnerable communities and nations have used the human rights lexicon to argue their case for an urgent and ambitious response to climate change. The purpose of this Social Development Department Working paper is to...
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Format: | Working Paper |
Language: | English en_US |
Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/868991468330311558/Development-climate-change-and-human-rights-from-the-margins-to-the-mainstream http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27308 |
Summary: | Since 2005, a growing number of
vulnerable communities and nations have used the human
rights lexicon to argue their case for an urgent and
ambitious response to climate change. The purpose of this
Social Development Department Working paper is to examine
the emergence of a new discourse linking climate change and
human rights, and to assess its social and political
implications, particularly as they relate to development
practitioners. The scope of this paper is to explore what
relevance this new discourse has on what David Kennedy calls
the 'vocabularies, expertise, and sensibilities'
of development practitioners (Kennedy 2005). The methodology
for this paper involved interviews with academics and policy
practitioners who have shaped this emerging discourse; a
wide-ranging literature review of texts relevant to the
fields of development, climate change and human rights;
discussions with development professionals who have the
daily responsibility of operationalizing approaches to
reducing vulnerability and building resilience; and finally
drawing upon the author's own experience leading the
Maldives' government's initiative on the Human
Dimensions of Climate Change and as a consultant within the
Social Dimensions of Climate Change Cluster of the World
Bank's Social Development Department. It is important
to stress that this paper is not a legal piece. Human rights
are as much about ethical demands, calls for social justice,
public awareness, advocacy, and political action as they are
concerned with legal norms and rules. Sen has pointed out a
'theory of human rights cannot be sensibly confined
within the juridical model in which it is frequently
incarcerated' (Sen 2004, 319). Consequently this piece
will focus on the wider, political economy aspects of the
interface between human rights and climate change. It is
further appropriate to state that this is not an advocacy
piece. The paper deliberately avoids being normative or
prescriptive in recommending a human rights-based approach
to developing climate change operations. It does examine why
vulnerable populations chose to embrace this approach, why
they continue to view it as a transformative strategy, and
what some of the successes and challenges have been. |
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