Arctic Athabaskan Council’s petition to the Inter-American Commission on human rights and climate change—business as usual or a breakthrough?

• Published in: Climatic Change
• Main Author: Szpak, Agnieszka
• Other Authors: Nicolaus Copernicus University
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Springer Science and Business Media LLC 2020
• Subjects: Atmospheric Science; Global and Planetary Change; Arctic; Canada; Will Point; black carbon; Climate change
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10584-020-02826-y; https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10584-020-02826-y.pdf; https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-020-02826-y/fulltext.html

Abstract In 2013, the Arctic Athabaskan Council representing the Arctic Athabaskan peoples filed a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The Council sought relief for violations of their rights resulting from rapid Arctic warming and melting caused by emissions of black carbon by Canada. The aim of the paper is to show legal complaints and arguments of a particular indigenous people, Arctic Athabaskans—arguments intended to enforce Canada’s obligation to reduce or eliminate black carbon emissions, which negatively affect numerous rights of indigenous Athabaskans. Additionally, the article will point to the new legal developments and potential success of those arguments and litigation itself. The article analyses issues at the intersection of human rights, indigenous peoples and climate change. The concluding remarks attempt to answer the research questions and offer some reflections on the potential to protect indigenous peoples’ rights offered by this type of advocacy strategy and, more specifically, the petition in particular. The research method adopted is that of legal-institutional analysis as well as content analysis of relevant literature (analysis of the discourse). This paper moves forward existing climate litigation literature which focuses on human rights. As Osofsky and Peel (2018) highlight, human rights-based climate litigation is a new development in the field, and this paper expands it further.