Human rights and land-based carbon mitigation

Abstract

The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change saw the international community agree to ambitious climate goals, with commitments to keeping temperature rise ‘well below’ 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and to ‘pursue efforts’ for 1.5°C. 1 It is now well recognized that a temperature rise of 2°C cannot be considered ‘safe’, with even a 1.5°C temperature rise exceeding thresholds of dangerous climate change. 2 This means that greenhouse gas emissions must effectively be reduced to zero. The long-term goal towards achieving this has been articulated in the Paris Agreement as ‘balancing emissions from sources with removals from sinks’, 3 which suggests a greater role for land, forests and other ec..