Malayna Raftopoulos

REDD+ and human rights: Addressing the urgent need for a full community-based human rights impact assessment

This article makes the case for carrying out a series of community-based human rights impact assessments (HRIA) on the international mechanism, reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation plus conservation and sustainable development (REDD+). In outlining the prima facie case, this article discusses the key areas of concern surrounding REDD+ and the repercussions for the rights and interests of local forest and indigenous communities. Furthermore, in its discussion on why REDD+ necessitates a HRIA, the article explores the implications that a specific link between human rights and REDD+ would have on the promotion and protection of forest peoples and indigenous human rights. In the context of the climate change crisis, formulating a specific link between human rights and climate change mitigation strategies such as REDD+ is highly pertinent if they are to have a positive impact at a local level. Formulating this connection could potentially secure the protection of traditional knowledge, law, customs and lands of those communities in which it operates, ensuring that the most vulnerable and poorest members of society do not bare the negative costs of such policies.

Contemporary debates on social-environmental conflicts, extractivism and human rights in Latin America

This opening contribution to ‘Social-Environmental Conflicts, Extractivism and Human Rights in Latin America’ analyses how human rights have emerged as a weapon in the political battleground over the environment as natural resource extraction has become an increasingly contested and politicised form of development. It examines the link between human rights abuses and extractivism, arguing that this new cycle of protests has opened up new political spaces for human rights based resistance. Furthermore, the explosion of socio-environmental conflicts that have accompanied the expansion and politicisation of natural resources has highlighted the different conceptualisations of nature, development and human rights that exist within Latin America. While new human rights perspectives are emerging in the region, mainstream human rights discourses are providing social movements and activists with the legal power to challenge extractivism and critique the current development agenda. However, while the application of human rights discourses can put pressure on governments, it has yielded limited concrete results largely because the state as a guardian of human rights remains fragile in Latin America and is willing to override their commitment to human and environmental rights in the pursuit of development. Lastly, individual contributions to the volume are introduced and future directions for research in natural resource development and human rights are suggested.