Climate Change and Human Rights: A Human Rights Approach Towards Climate Danger in Pakistan

Description

Covered SDGs 1,2,3 & 13. one of the hardest challenges facing Pakistan is climate change, which generates serious dangers to the environment and economy as well as to the security and provision of basic human rights. Pakistan experiences frequent droughts, heatwaves, floods, urban inundation, and glacier melt. These climate-induced dangers have displaced millions, shattered livelihoods, and deepened inequality. The weight of climate impacts falls disproportionately on vulnerable groups in the country, despite contributing minimally to global greenhouse gas emissions. Resultantly, basic rights such as the rights to life, health, education, water, and livelihood are, thereby, undermined, which are guaranteed under the constitutional and international commitments. This research proposes an empirical, systematic, and rights-based investigation of the effects of climate change on human rights in Pakistan. While current literature and policy frameworks recognize climate susceptibility and resilience, they largely underscore conceptual or technocratic approaches, offering limited empirical evidence on the effects of climate change on human rights. Moreover, significant gaps persist in analysing intersectional vulnerabilities, sub-national governance mechanisms, and accountability structures that shape rights protection in climate-affected contexts. Addressing these gaps, the research utilizes a human rights-based approach to investigate how climate-induced disasters and migration affect basic rights, with particular attention to gender-differentiated and socio-economic impacts. A mixed-methods design, using comparative case studies in severely climate-affected regions, including flood-prone districts of Sindh and South Punjab, will be applied. Strengthening the interdisciplinary scholarship, the expected outcomes include empirical evidence on climate-related human rights impacts, policy-relevant recommendations for rights-responsive climate and disaster governance.