Drowning Coastlines: Human Rights Amid the Climate Crisis

As the effects of climate change exacerbate, coastal communities across the globe are getting hit by rising sea levels and natural disasters at an accelerated pace. Those changes are jeopardizing people’s homes, livelihoods, rights, especially in small island nations. Floods and erosion are making many coastal regions unlivable, forcing people to relocate. This raises important questions of how to ensure the protection of these displaced communities and what responsibility the international community has to them. Acknowledging this reality demands a fresh perspective that includes the protection of human rights, adaptation and relocation. This paper explores the relationship between climate change and human rights, and calls on the need of urgent action to safeguard the people disproportionately affected by the climate crisis.