ANU Centre for European Studies Visiting Fellow Dr Ottavio Quirico from the University of New Engand, NSW has published an interesting article in the Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights entitled 'Systemic Integration between Climate Change and Human Rights in International Law?' 2017, Vol. 35(I) 31-50

UN human rights organs have persistently invoked the integration of fundamental rights into the UNFCCC regime and the Paris Agreement now provides that the ‘Parties should, when taking action to address climate change, respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights’. How integration should be achieved is nevertheless a matter of international law development. The international recognition of a human right to a sustainable environment therefore emerges as fundamental to determining human rights responsibility for climate change, with particular regard to States. It can be established by acknowledging the fundamental nature of the no-harm rule and would facilitate systemically integrating fundamental rights into climate change regulation and taking consequential institutional action. This argument adds strings to the bow of those scholars who support the idea of intergenerational environmental justice on legal and moral grounds.

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Dr Quirico is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Law at the University of New England and a Visiting Fellow at the ANU Centre for European Studies. Prior to that, he was a Marie Curie Fellow at University Panthéon-Assas (Paris, France), Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute (Florence, Italy), and Visiting Fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law (Cambridge, UK). He was also a Lecturer at University Lille Nord de France and delivered undergraduate and postgraduate courses at Washington State University (Pullman, US), Federal University of Paraiba (João Pessoa, Brazil), Federal University of Porto Alegre (Brazil), and at the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (Turin, Italy). Dr Quirico has acted as a Consultant to the United Nations and practised in civil and criminal litigation in Europe. For more information, visit Dr Quirico's profile.