Human Rights Approaches to Planetary Crises: From Climate Change to Plastic Pollution (Law, Justice and Ecology)

This book analyses over 20 years of rights-based litigation in the areas of climate change and plastic pollution in order to assess the value of rights in confronting and overcoming planetary crises. We live in an age of planetary crises such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and plastic pollution, which take a huge toll on communities all around the world, endangering their fundamental interests.But can the lack of government action on these crises - or action that worsens them - amount to violations of human rights?Many courts are grappling with this question, as rights-based litigation becomes increasingly common.By focusing on climate change and plastic pollution as case studies, this book examines the viability of rights claims when confronting planetary crises in courts.From early attempts to pursue rights claims in response to planetary crises in the first decade of the 2000s to high-profile court wins in such cases in the 2010s and the spread of such cases across dozens of