The inextricable link between human rights, climate change and State’s obligations is now well acknowledged. In 2019, five UN bodies released a joint statement confirming that climate change poses “significant risks to the enjoyment of human rights” with “the risk of harm… particularly high [for] women, children, persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and persons living in rural areas”. The bodies asserted that accordingly States “must adopt and implement policies aimed at reducing emissions which reflect the highest possible ambition [and] foster climate resilience.”

Under the Paris Agreement too, Australia is explicitly required to adopt a greenhouse gas reduction target, known as a “Nationally Determined Contribution” (NDC), which reflects “its highest possible ambition.” Despite this, and the explicit recognition that climate change is a human rights issue, Australia remains tied to harmful inaction and a woefully inadequate NDC.

“The rights of groups who are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis – young people, people with disabilities, and First Nations people – are protected under numerous UN Conventions including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – all of which Australia has ratified. Australia is not only likely in breach of all of these instruments, but it appears that the government is ignoring its fundamental obligations to protect the rights of young people.”

– Brittni Dienhoff, Climate Lawyer, EJA

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has stated, “Children are disproportionately impacted by climate change due to [childrens’] unique metabolism, physiology and developmental needs. The negative impacts of climate change, including the increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters, changing precipitation patterns, food and water shortages, and the increased transmission of communicable diseases, threaten the enjoyment by children of their rights to health, life, food, water and sanitation, education, housing, culture, and development, among others. Climate change heightens existing social and economic inequalities, intensifies poverty and reverses progress towards improvement in children’s well-being.”

“It is difficult to characterise in a single phrase the devastation that the plausible evidence in this proceeding forecasts for the Children [Plaintiffs]. … the human experience – quality of life, opportunities to partake in nature’s treasures, the capacity to grow and prosper – all will be greatly diminished … It will be inflicted by the inaction of this generation of adults, in what might fairly be described as the greatest inter-generational injustice ever inflicted by one generation of humans upon the next.”

– His Honour Justice Bromberg in Sharma and Ors vs Minister for the Environment

The Committee on the Rights of the Child has stated that health is “a state of complete physical mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”, and that States must “put children’s health concerns at the centre of their climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies”

A recent study published in Science found that a 6-year-old in 2020 will experience twice as many bushfires and tropical cyclones, three times more river floods, four times more crop failures, five times more droughts, and 36 times more heatwaves compared to a person born in 1960.

A recent study published in Science found that a 6-year-old in 2020 will experience twice as many bushfires and tropical cyclones, three times more river floods, four times more crop failures, five times more droughts, and 36 times more heatwaves compared to a person born in 1960.

Young people in Australia will continue to grapple with mental health issues as they mourn ecological losses and human harms, and fear for the future. Given their age, children have little power to limit climate harms, making them more vulnerable to climate anxiety and potentially exacerbating pre-existing mental health problems.

Research and evidence regarding the impact of the Black Summer bushfires on Indigenous peoples in NSW and Victoria provided to the Australian government’s Royal Commission Inquiry into Natural Disasters (authors of which include Euahlayi man and academic Bhiamie Williamson) highlights that:

at the time of the fires one quarter of all Indigenous peoples in NSW and Victoria were directly affected by the bushfires; and
1 in 10 children living in bushfire affected areas were Indigenous with over 36% of the total Indigenous population in fire-affected areas being less than 15 years old.

In a recent article in Independent Australia, Eleanor Beidatsch, a disability and environmental rights activist, stated that when a wild winter storm hit her home on the south coast of Western Australia, her life was placed in jeopardy. Eleanor relies on respirators for life support and when the storm hit and caused power outages, she was left with a finite supply of power to the respirators.