Human Rights and Sustainable Development Law at a Moment of Global Transformation

Climate change, ecological degradation and widening inequality are no longer challenges operating at the margins of human rights law. They increasingly determine whether rights to life, health, food, water, housing, culture and self-determination can be realised at all. Yet the institutions responsible for protecting these rights were largely designed before the climate emergency acquired its present scale and urgency.

The central legal question is therefore changing. It is no longer simply whether environmental harm can engage human rights obligations, but how courts, governments and international institutions must act once that connection is recognised. Across a new collection of recordings from the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL), international judges, United Nations experts and leading scholars and practitioners explore what this transformation demands of law.

Human Rights Courts and the Climate Emergency

Regional human rights courts are becoming increasingly important forums for defining states’ responsibilities in the face of climate change. Their contribution goes beyond deciding individual disputes. Through their interpretation of existing rights and obligations, they help establish what governments must do to prevent foreseeable harm, protect those facing disproportionate risks and provide effective remedies when protection fails.

Hon. Judge Anja Seibert-Fohr (European Court of Human Rights), Hon. Judge Patricia Pérez Goldberg (Inter-American Court of Human Rights) and Hon. Judge Duncan Gaswaga (African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights) consider this evolving judicial role from the perspectives of three regional systems. Their reflections demonstrate that climate change is not entering human rights law through a single doctrine or institutional pathway. It raises questions about jurisdiction, causation, positive obligations, access to justice and the relationship between national and international adjudication.

What unites these questions is a deeper concern: whether legal systems can respond to harms that are cumulative, transboundary and intergenerational while remaining grounded in the protection of identifiable rights and communities. Regional jurisprudence is becoming one of the places in which that balance is being worked out.

Climate Action as a Human Rights Obligation

Recognising climate change as a human rights issue alters the legal character of climate action. Measures to reduce emissions and adapt to unavoidable impacts are no longer matters of policy preference alone. They may also form part of states’ duties to protect people from foreseeable threats to their lives, health, livelihoods and dignity.

Prof. Sumudu Atapattu (CISDL / University of Wisconsin–Madison), Hon. Justice Prof. Marcel Szabó (CISDL / Constitutional Court of Hungary / Pázmány Péter Catholic University), Prof. Payam Akhavan (Massey College / University of Toronto), Prof. Tenia Kyriazi (CISDL / ILA–UAE / Middlesex University Dubai), Prof. David Boyd (University of British Columbia / former UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment) and Prof. Elisa Morgera (UN Special Rapporteur on Climate Change and Human Rights / Durham University) examine the implications of this shift. Their contributions address developments in climate litigation, increasingly stringent due-diligence obligations, the transition away from fossil fuels and the position of individuals and communities exposed to disproportionate climate harm.

This rights-based approach also places questions of distribution at the centre of climate law. Climate policies cannot be judged solely by the emissions they reduce. Their legitimacy also depends on who bears their costs, whose interests shape their design and whether they address or reproduce existing inequalities. Effective climate action must therefore be connected to the pursuit of poverty reduction, gender equality and reduced inequalities under SDGs 1, 5 and 10, as well as climate action under SDG 13.

 

Reorienting Business, Trade and Investment

The global economy cannot support sustainable development if its governing rules continue to separate commercial activity from its human and environmental consequences. Trade, investment and natural-resource development can generate employment, infrastructure and public revenues. They can also contribute to dispossession, pollution, unsafe working conditions and the concentration of economic power.

The challenge is not simply to reconcile economic law with human rights after conflicts arise. It is to design economic governance so that responsible conduct, environmental protection and human dignity shape decisions from the outset.

Prof. Damilola S. Olawuyi (CISDL / Hamad Bin Khalifa University / International Law Association), Prof. Alessandra Lehmen (CISDL / University of Caxias do Sul / Brazilian Bar Association–Rio Grande do Sul), Prof. Ted Gleason (CISDL / Grenoble School of Management), Prof. Diane Desierto (CISDL / University of Notre Dame) and Prof. Thomas Cottier (World Trade Institute / University of Bern) consider how corporate responsibility, investor conduct and international trade and investment rules might be reoriented towards this purpose. Their analysis highlights opportunities arising through multilateral, regional and bilateral cooperation, while confronting the continuing tension between economic integration and effective public-interest regulation.

Progress towards SDGs 2, 6, 7 and 8 will depend in part on how this tension is resolved. Sustainable business and investment cannot be measured by economic growth alone. They must also be assessed by whether they protect natural resources, widen access to essential goods and services, and allow communities to participate meaningfully in decisions affecting their futures.

International Justice and Principled Legal Leadership

Law does not develop through institutions and doctrines alone. It is also shaped by judges and legal leaders willing to articulate principles before their full significance is widely accepted.

The legacies of Hon. Justice Charles D. Gonthier and HE Judge C.G. Weeramantry demonstrate the importance of this form of leadership. Both understood that international law must respond to the long-term consequences of human activity and that sustainable development is inseparable from justice between peoples, communities and generations.

In the 2026 Hon. Justice Charles D. Gonthier Memorial Lecture, HE Judge Prof. Dire Tladi (International Court of Justice) reflects on the responsibilities of international law at a moment of profound global change. Perspectives from Hon. Justice Mahmud Jamal (Supreme Court of Canada), Hon. Judge Sébastien Grammond (Federal Court of Canada), Her Excellency the Right Honourable Louise Arbour and other eminent legal experts further consider how principled legal leadership can advance justice, peace, human rights and sustainable development.

The recognition of the 2026 HE Judge C.G. Weeramantry International Justice Award laureates and the HE Judge C.G. and Rosemary Weeramantry International Law and Sustainable Development Global Fellow carries this legacy forward. Such recognition matters because the development of law depends not only on identifying emerging problems, but also on supporting those prepared to confront them with intellectual courage and practical commitment.

Indigenous Authority, Future Generations and the Rights of Nature

Many legal systems remain structured around a narrow conception of whose interests count. They prioritise present decision-makers over future generations, individual rights over collective relationships and human interests over the ecological systems on which human life depends.

Indigenous rights, intergenerational justice and the rights of nature challenge those assumptions from different directions. Each asks law to recognise forms of authority, responsibility or legal personality that conventional institutions have frequently marginalised.

In his opening keynote, the Rt Hon. Ralph Regenvanu (Minister for Climate Change Adaptation, Energy, Environment, Meteorology, Geo-Hazards and Disaster Management, Vanuatu) brings the perspective of a state confronting the immediate consequences of climate change while helping to reshape international legal responses to it. Dr Pamela Towela-Sambo (CISDL / University of Zambia / Human Rights Commission of Zambia), Adv. Nina Pindham (Cornerstone Climate / UK Environmental Law Association), Adv. Emily Julier (Hogan Lovells) and Prof. Wayne Garnons-Williams (CISDL / International Inter-Tribal Trade and Investment Organization / National Sixties Scoop Healing Foundation of Canada) examine how legal systems can recognise Indigenous authority and knowledge, strengthen children’s participation, protect future generations and respond to the growing recognition of nature as a rights-holder.

These are not merely extensions of existing environmental law. They raise foundational questions about who can speak, who can hold rights and what responsibilities the present owes to communities and ecosystems beyond its immediate political horizon. Their significance extends across SDGs 14, 15 and 16 and, more fundamentally, to whether the 2030 Agenda can be pursued without reproducing the exclusions that helped create today’s crises.

Building the Next Generation of Sustainable Development Law

Human rights and sustainable development are sometimes treated as competing priorities: the first concerned with protecting individuals, the second with pursuing collective social, economic and environmental goals. In practice, neither can be secured without the other. Development that disregards rights is unlikely to be inclusive or legitimate; rights that ignore ecological and economic conditions may remain impossible to realise.

Dr Ashfaq Khalfan (CISDL / Global School of Sustainability, London School of Economics), Adv. Ayman Cherkaoui (CISDL / IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law / Hassan II International Environmental Training Centre), Prof. Markus Gehring (CISDL / University of Cambridge), Prof. Ilaria Espa (CISDL / Università della Svizzera italiana / World Trade Institute), Prof. Maya Prabhu (CISDL / Yale University), Prof. Jorge Cabrera (CISDL / University of Costa Rica) and Dr Pamela Towela-Sambo (CISDL / University of Zambia / Human Rights Commission of Zambia) consider the legal innovations needed to bridge this divide. Their perspectives identify emerging instruments, institutional reforms and priorities for accelerating the SDGs while preparing for the post-2030 agenda.

No single court, government or international organisation can accomplish this transformation. It requires cooperation among institutions operating at different levels and, equally, meaningful participation by Indigenous Peoples, researchers, practitioners and affected communities. The quality of future legal responses will depend on whether this cooperation redistributes influence as well as information—allowing those most affected by global challenges to shape the rules intended to address them.

What connects these discussions is a common recognition: law cannot respond adequately to today’s interconnected crises by preserving the divisions of the past. Human rights law must engage with ecological limits. Economic law must account for human and environmental consequences. International institutions must consider future generations, and legal decision-making must recognise knowledge and authority beyond the state.

The question is therefore not whether human rights and sustainable development law will change. It is whether that change will occur quickly and inclusively enough to meet the challenges already transforming the conditions of human life.

Thanks are due to the hosts, partners, chairs, speakers and rapporteurs of the Global Online Symposium on Human Rights, Sustainable Development and the Law, convened online on 10 July 2026 by the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law and the McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, in cooperation with leading academic institutions, international organisations and expert networks worldwide. The six symposium sessions, which inspired this piece, are now available as a collection of recordings offering students, researchers, practitioners and policy-makers direct access to the perspectives of international judges and leading global experts.