Climate Extremes and Human Rights: Winter Session in Geneva

People around the world are exposed to many hazardous extreme events, including wildfire, flood, heatwave and drought. The locations, frequency and intensity of these extremes are already changing, and increasingly these changes can be linked to increases in greenhouse gas emissions from human activities. But many factors must interact with extreme events to cause a humanitarian disaster. These include the exposure of people and infrastructure to the impacts of extreme events, and the response capabilities before, during, and after the disaster. Furthermore, the vulnerabilities created by poverty and conflict have an impact on the characteristics of disasters, and extreme events in turn can exacerbate existing human rights calamities. The disasters at the nexus of climate change and human rights can be understood through the lens of incident theory. Each damaging climate extreme tends to motivate if not force action.