A Rising Tide: The Implications of Climate Change Inundation for Human Rights and State Sovereignty

Climate change has adverse implications for a wide range of human rights. Low-lying, socio-economically disadvantaged small island developing states are among those most vulnerable to climate change harms – including rising sea levels and extreme weather events – which threaten the habitability of their territory and the enjoyment of basic human rights, including the right to self-determination. Customary international law and international human rights law establish extraterritorial obligations with regard to the fulfilment of those economic, social, cultural and collective rights threatened by climate change inundation. However, the international legal framework has been constructed around a system of legal and political governance that is premised on state sovereignty and designed to mediate the vertical relationship between state and citizen. The disappearance of a low-lying small island state without an immediate successor has serious implications for statehood, sovereignty, self-determination and the protection of basic human rights. While this does not necessarily entail the abandonment of the human rights project as a response to climate change harms, it does require a re-conceptualisation of the existing human rights framework. The human rights regime must embrace forward-looking, trans-boundary mechanisms of monitoring and protection that no longer rely on the state as the central domain of moral concern, or risk becoming obsolete.