Introduction
Recent climate events illustrate the growing human impact of climate change.[1] However, the legal framework governing state responsibility remains fragmented. This short piece argues that while climate treaties provide the primary institutional framework for mitigation, adaptation and international cooperation, human rights law imposes more stringent and enforceable duties on states. I highlight how the UNFCCC, Kyoto Protocol, and Paris Agreement create obligations, examines their intersection with binding human rights and concludes that a human rights approach makes climate protection a legally enforceable duty toward individuals and communities.
International climate law frameworks and their obligations
According to the ICJ Advisory Opinion on the obligations of states in respect of climate change, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) provides the core framework for state climate obligations based on mitigation, adaptation and international cooperation, guided by CBDR-RC.[2] The Court confirms that Article 4 imposes binding duties requiring parties to maintain emissions inventories, implement mitigation and adaptation programmes, and cooperate on climate technologies.[3] These obligations apply differentially: developed states must adopt effective mitigation policies, report emissions reductions, support adaptation in vulnerable developing states, and provide finance and technology transfer. The Convention thus establishes a binding duty of international cooperation,[4] to be implemented in good faith and with due diligence in addressing climate change.
The Court also affirms the continued legal relevance of the Kyoto Protocol. Although it has no active commitment period after 2020, it was not replaced by the Paris Agreement. Instead, it remains an interpretative guide within the climate regime and a benchmark for assessing whether Annex B developed states complied with their emission-reduction commitments during applicable periods.[5] By introducing legally binding, quantified emission-reduction targets and a monitoring system, the Protocol operationalised the broader mitigation duties of the UNFCCC and strengthened the framework for assessing compliance and potential state responsibility.[6]
The Court identifies the Paris Agreement as the most recent universally binding climate treaty. It seeks to strengthen the global response to climate change by limiting temperature rise to well below 2°C while pursuing efforts to keep it to 1.5°C, enhancing climate resilience, and aligning financial flows with low-emission development. Binding mitigation duties arise under Art. 4, which requires states to prepare, communicate and maintain successive NDCs and pursue domestic measures to achieve them, with each NDC reflecting increasing ambition toward the 1.5°C goal. Art. 7(9) requires adaptation planning and implementation. The Agreement also imposes cooperation and support obligations, including developed states’ duty under Art. 9 to provide climate finance to developing countries, alongside commitments on technology transfer (Art. 10), capacity-building (Art. 11), transparency and reporting (Arts. 4(8), 4(13)), and climate education and public participation (Art. 12). Although Art. 8 establishes a cooperative framework on loss and damage without liability or compensation, breaches of Paris Agreement obligations may still engage the general rules of state responsibility under customary international law.[7]
Beyond the treaty-based climate regime, the International Court of Justice notes that climate change also engages binding obligations under international human rights law (IHRL). Climate impacts threaten rights protected in universal treaties, generating enforceable state duties that may be stricter than those in climate treaties because they establish non-derogable minimum standards. Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the right to life[8] requires states to safeguard environmental conditions necessary for ‘life with dignity’, meaning failure to address threats such as extreme heat, flooding, or environmental degradation may breach this duty.[9] Similarly, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in Article 12[10] obliges states to protect the right to health by preventing environmental pollution, including GHG emissions, while the right to an adequate standard of living requires maintaining environmental conditions necessary for these rights. In this way, IHRL reinforces and, in some respects, exceeds the commitments of climate treaties by establishing minimum protections against environmental harm.
Closely related to this reasoning, the Court also recognises the emerging right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as an independent human right under international law. It draws support from United Nations General Assembly Resolution 76/300[11] and from the growing recognition of environmental rights in national and regional jurisprudence. Regional courts, including the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and the European Court of Human Rights, have already incorporated environmental protection within human rights frameworks. The Court concludes that rights such as life, health, privacy, and an adequate standard of living cannot be realised without safeguarding environmental quality.[12] Consequently, existing human rights duties generate a derivative obligation on states to protect the environment, making environmental protection a necessary condition for compliance with human rights law. This renders the human rights framework more demanding than the climate regime, since instruments like the Paris Agreement only encourage states to consider human rights in climate action.
In lieu of a conclusion
Notably, Climate treaties focus on collective environmental outcomes and regulate state relations without granting direct rights to individuals, whereas human rights law protects people directly. The ICJ notes that climate change becomes legally relevant when it threatens rights such as life, health, or an adequate standard of living, allowing affected individuals or groups to seek remedies through treaty bodies, courts, or domestic litigation, unlike the collective compliance mechanisms of the climate regime.
Nonetheless, ICJ stresses that human rights law and climate treaties complement each other. Treaties provide scientific and institutional guidance, while human rights law imposes stricter, enforceable obligations to protect individuals’ dignity. Consequently, states must act on climate change not just collectively but as a legal duty to ensure effective enjoyment of human rights, making climate protection a rights-based, enforceable responsibility rather than a negotiable commitment.
* George Njogu is the Editor in Charge of the Kabarak Law Review Blog, and an undergraduate student at Kabarak University School of Law.
[1] AFP, Anadolu and Reuters, ‘At least 42 people killed in days of floods across Kenya’ Aljazeera, 9 March 2026, –https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/9/at-least-42-people-killed-in-days-of-floods-across-kenya– on 9 March 2026. This is a good example of the effects of climate change.
[2] Advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on obligations of states in respect of climate change, on 23 July 2025, 202-208.
[3] Advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on obligations of states in respect of climate change, on 23 July 2025, 262.
[4] Advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on obligations of states in respect of climate change, on 23 July 2025, 214-218.
[5] Advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on obligations of states in respect of climate change, on 23 July 2025, 269.
[6] Advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on obligations of states in respect of climate change, on 23 July 2025, 219-221.
[7] Advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on obligations of states in respect of climate change, on 23 July 2025, 222-270.
[8] International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 16 December 1966, A/RES/21/2200, Article 6.
[9] Advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on obligations of states in respect of climate change, on 23 July 2025, 377.
[10] International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 16 December 1966, A/RES/21/2200A, Article 12.
[11] United Nations General Assembly Resolution 76/300 on the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, A/RES/76/300. Also see Advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on obligations of states in respect of climate change, on 23 July 2025, 392.
[12] Advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on obligations of states in respect of climate change, on 23 July 2025, 393.
