Amicus Brief – Human Rights and Climate Change 2. Human rights violations associated with climate change impacts 26. The petitioners maintain that the adverse effects of climate change threaten the enjoyment of a range of internationally protected human rights, most saliently the rights to life, to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, to food, to water, to sanitation, to adequate housing, and to self-determination. Their contention is supported in numerous Human Rights Council (HRC) resolutions and can therefore be regarded as uncontroversial.65 The implementation of states’ obligations associated with these rights66 depends on constitutional arrangements and other provisions of domestic law and practice. In this connection, leading climate change law expert Rajamani notes how: The extent of application and enforcement of protected human rights will, of necessity, differ from state to state depending on national circumstances, constitutional culture, legislative proclivity, judicial creativity and governance mechanisms, but at a minimum, the core human rights treaties set standards and benchmarks in place, and impose process obligations to integrate human rights concerns into [climate] policy planning.67 27. At the very minimum, human rights norms clarify how states should respond to climate change.68 This core premise is now enshrined in the Preamble to the Paris Agreement, which acknowledges that, whenever states take action to address climate change, they should ‘respect, protect and consider their respective obligations on human rights’ and in particular ‘the right to health, the rights of indigenous peoples, local communities, migrants, children, persons with disabilities and people in vulnerable situations and the right to development, as well as gender equality, empowerment of women and intergenerational equity’.69 The Paris Agreement’s reference to parties’ human rights obligations encompasses obligations in treaties they have ratified already, or may ratify in future. By forging an explicit link with human rights instruments, the Paris Agreement’s preamble engenders an expectation that parties will take into account their human rights obligations when they adopt measures to tackle climate change. This approach is consistent with the interpretative principle of systemic integration enshrined in Article 31.3(c) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.70 According to the principle of systemic integration, when undertaking new obligations, states must interpret these new obligations in a way that is mutually supportive, rather than conflicting with their obligations under other instruments. The Paris Agreement’s reference to human rights may therefore be viewed as a forceful reminder to practice systemic integration in the interpretation of parties’ obligations under that treaty.71 28. This interplay between climate change and human rights law has increasingly been recognized in the literature,72 as well as by human rights bodies. A string of HRC resolutions emphasise the potential of human rights obligations, standards and principles to ‘inform and strengthen’ climate change law- and policy-making, by ‘promoting policy coherence, legitimacy and sustainable outcomes’.73 The HRC has also encouraged its special procedures mandate holders to consider the issue of climate change and human rights within their respective mandates.74 Amongst the most notable outcomes of such engagement are the reports of UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment on the human rights threatened by climate change75 and on the human rights obligations relating to climate change.76 These reports underscore how human rights bodies can inform and improve climate policy by providing forums to address issues ‘that might otherwise be overlooked’.77 29. Negotiations on the Paris Agreement have inaugurated a new season in cooperation between international bodies dealing with human rights and climate change. The HRC special procedures mandate-holders successfully petitioned for the inclusion of human rights language in the agreement.78 11