This 2022 report from HLRN’s Violation Database (VDB), In Pursuit of Climate Justice, takes a hard look at violations of adequate housing land and other habitat-related human rights in the context of environmental hazards and climate change. Based on VDB entries spanning more than a century, each instance explores the root causes and consequences of loss, cost and damage resulting from human activity.

Taking a human rights approach, this report seeks to identify the scope of impacts and the public, private and/or corporate responsibility for the remedies and reparation to which victims and affected persons are entitled. The collection of cases gives rise to a pattern of 13 causes/contexts for monitors, duty bearers and human rights defenders to consider.

Conflict situations
Cross-border effects
Development-induced displacement
Environmental racism/discrimination
Extractivism
Governance
Industrial pollution/contamination
Large-scale agriculture/livestock farming
Megaprojects
Neglect
Tourism
Urbanization
Other human factors

Out of these categories also emerges one overarching pattern, whereby the persons subject to these violations in the context of environmental hazard and climate change are most often the most vulnerable among us. The many lessons contained in the report on World Habitat Day give occasion also to numerous recommendations for duty holders to prevent and remedy the devastating events accompanying environmental destruction and climate change, which promise to become even costlier and more frequent.

Download In Pursuit of Climate Justice: Housing and Land Rights Violations in the Context of Environmental Hazards and Climate Change