5. Conclusion

Climate change has significant implications for human rights, and this is increasingly being recognised at international and domestic levels. As this chapter has explored, human rights frameworks are increasingly being applied to climate change issues, providing new avenues for advocacy, litigation and accountability. However, critiques of human rights approaches highlight important limitations and risks that need to be navigated. Human rights law will continue to evolve in response to the climate crisis, with emerging concepts such as relational rights and redress for loss and damage potentially reshaping how we conceptualise rights in the Anthropocene. As future legal practitioners, it will be crucial for students to think critically about how human rights can be most effectively applied (and developed) to address the significant threats that climate change poses to human wellbeing and to humanity’s relationships with the rest of the biosphere. Continued engagement with diverse perspectives, law and expertise, particularly from Indigenous peoples and communities on the front lines of the climate crisis, will be essential to developing a transformative approach to pursuing climate justice.