Human rights-based approaches to climate litigation. A critical perspective of the indigenous Athabaskans case

This chapter aims at re-thinking in a climate justice context and in a critical and ethical legal perspective the international human rights law framework applied in the climate litigation realm. It does so by analysing the Petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Seeking Relief from Violations of the Rights of Arctic Athabaskan Peoples Resulting from Rapid Arctic Warming and Melting Caused by Emissions of Black Carbon by Canada, a lawsuit filed by the Athabaskan Indigenous people in 2013. The chapter’s purpose is to offers a perspective which focuses on the importance of discerning the latent patterns of exclusion, neo-colonialism and cross-contamination of international human rights law against corporate legal power. Therefore, the chapter outlines the limits of international human rights law when it comes to protecting the rights of Indigenous peoples in the context of climate litigation.