Climate Crisis, Human Rights and the Path to Remedy and Reparation for COP30

Author: Lien Vandamme, Hyeonggeun Ji, Moumita Das Gupta, Mihir Bhatt, Khayal Trivedi

The March 12, 2025, HOISA panel members proposed for COP30 that Human rights offer the moral and legal foundation for climate justice as well as humanitarian justice. Without rights-based remedies, every disaster response risks becoming another cycle of neglect rather than a path to just recovery.

For a decade now, international institutions and human rights law, along with the many development agencies are facing particularly difficult and testing times. The urgency of the climate crisis is being overlooked, international legal institutions are being undermined, and simultaneously, development budgets are being cut, leading to unjust humanitarian actions. On the other hand, we are witnessing the devastating impacts of the humanitarian crisis on people’s lives and livelihoods, inducing related migration. In this complex and interconnected landscape, how can humanitarian and human rights institutions remedy the harm being caused by the climate crisis? Is reparation on the agenda? Did this question cut across the COP30 agenda and objectives?

Working on this premise, in late 2024, the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) published a report on “Remedy and Reparation for Climate Harm - A Human Rights Case”. This report is an important resource for the humanitarian field as it lays out a legal basis for demanding that States[1] and corporations to uphold their obligations to provide redress for mounting climate harm. In the current political scenario of massive cuts to development projects and the freezing of several funds, this report is all the more relevant to the COP30 agenda. HOISA, in its attempt to contextualise the report from a South Asian perspective, organised a panel discussion in March 2025 to uncover several opportunities and challenges that lie ahead of us.

Premise of the Report

The CIEL report sets out to re-look at the climate harm being done not as a natural occurrence or a god’s act, but rather as an outcome of continued polluting activities by the states and corporations compounded by existing social inequities. The states therefore, have a legal obligation to prevent, minimise, and remedy foreseeable human rights violations, and that applies in the context of climate-related human rights harm. Lien Vandamme, lead author of the report, argues that based on existing international law, the right to reparation is not limited to compensation, but rather it entails a whole range of aspects, including restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction, and non-repetition. And these aspects should be translated in not just financial resources but also in terms of policies, governance and how the state approaches the vulnerable and the polluters, keeping in mind the most affected people at the centre of all decisions.

According to the report, the state’s obligation to provide a remedy is grounded in the ‘Polluters’ Pay Principle’ that the states have had for decades about the principal causes of climate change, and in their legal duty to cease climate-destructive conduct and prevent and redress climate harm. These states’ legal obligations also extend to regulating corporate conduct and ensuring accountability for carbon emissions and their consequences. Higher taxes on polluting industries are one of the many mechanisms.

Political Obstacles on the road to justice

Despite having the legal basis to ensure remedy, the international community is facing several political obstacles to implement it. The UNFCCC is failing to uphold this right. Their Loss and Damage Fund (FRLD) is still voluntary and under-resourced, and this calls for an urgent establishment of a finance structure ensuring that the fund reaches the front-liners. On the other hand, the loans are used to induce debt injustice towards certain countries. This is a deeply unjust and post-colonial economic system. Countries vulnerable to disasters are pushed into an endless debt cycle without creating sustainable systems that build sustainable resilience and clamps on the polluters. This is a major obstacle on the road to climate justice as well as humanitarian justice.

Work ahead for the international actors

In such challenging environments, it is of utmost importance that the already established legal obligations of the state are being constantly interpreted in the changing contexts - to ensure that the principles and the obligations continue to remain relevant in international, national and regional human rights bodies. The long-recognised linkages between the climate crisis and human rights law are critical, as they can provide guidance for litigation and governance (Ref: Manual for Climate Litigators) and move closer to climate and humanitarian justice.

The report subsequently lays out international bodies, institutions and platforms that can help advance the above-mentioned interlinkages, pathways and mechanisms required to ensure protection of the vulnerable, such as the Human Rights Council, Human Rights Treaty bodies, International courts and UN Special Procedures. It also gathers learning from other reparations mechanisms and proposes six principles that can help guide the reparations: Victim-centric, Inclusive and comprehensive, Intersectional, Adequate and Accessible, Accountable, Trackable and Adaptable. And most importantly, the affected population-centric.

Contextualising the report from the South Asian context

While the report looks at legal pathways to ensure recovery for the affected population on international platforms, the actual work will take place at the local, national and regional levels in their respective legal frameworks. A brief discussion on the South Asian context lays out many opportunities and challenges ahead, which can draw parallels to perhaps several other regions.

The international human rights law, the progress that happened in COP27 and 28, the increased focus on the (L&D) fund and calling for reparations are significant developments that can support litigations at the national, regional and international level in providing systemic remedy to the climate harm. But there are critical dilemmas from scientific, legal, and administrative perspectives that need to be addressed by all relevant authorities in the interest of affected populations.

1. How do we differentiate between a naturally occurring phenomenon, which is an Act of God, and climate change-induced phenomena that could provide reparation?

2. How do you measure and quantify the damage to the human body of the affected individual? Some effects cannot be quantified. Similarly, how do you quantify and translate the damage done by a polluter to an amount?

3. South Asian countries are one of the historically least emitting countries per individual, and yet the governments have adopted ample plans, policies and strategies to combat various climate emergencies such as heatwaves. Litigation against the government may not help.

4. There is an absence of legal recognition of “Climate Victims’’ and the defendants (the pollutants). Having a plurality of polluters also makes it rather difficult to measure who polluted what. Further to that, the defendants can very well lie outside the jurisdiction of the courts (for ex., from other countries).

5. And lastly, often the most affected are the poorest who have no means or time to file claims and reparations.

In addition to the above dilemmas, we must also acknowledge that in South Asia, there is a serious lack of sufficient data collection mechanisms. For example, deaths caused by disasters are often logged differently or not logged at all. An extreme heat-related death may be assigned medically as a cardiovascular event. There needs to be an integration of additional metadata to accurately capture the damage, and for the same, CSOs and youth of the affected people at the grassroots level must be made part of the data collection and monitoring system.

CIEL’s report is a reminder for governments, policy makers and humanitarian actors at COP30 to create sustainable systems that not just provide reparation for climate harm but also recovery. While much work is yet pending both at the international level as well as in our respective geographical regions, the principles proposed are universal and can be accepted at COP30. Thus, this discussion between South Asian practitioners and the lead author of the report lays out the importance of the exchange of ideas that must occur between several actors to take concrete financial steps for a better tomorrow for all in South Asia.

COP30 must agree that climate harm is not an act of God—it is an act of governance. Remedy begins when States and corporations boldly step into uncertainty and start taking responsibility for the suffering their emissions cause, the March 12, 2025, panel members concluded.

This article draws from the critical work of Lien Vandamme, Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL); Hyeonggeun Ji, Researcher at International Institute of Social Studies (ISS); Moumita Das Gupta, Centre for Climate Justice; Mihir Bhatt, All India Disaster Mitigation Institute (AIDMI); and Khayal Trivedi, HOISA.

[1] Referring to all states, regardless of their historical emissions.