IHRB Submission on the Right to Adequate Housing and Climate Change

The UN Rapporteur on the Right to Housing has invited input for the mandate’s upcoming report on the right to adequate housing and climate change. The objectives of the report are to:

• “Take stock of the magnitude of challenges that the climate crisis poses to guaranteeing the right to adequate housing for all and the solutions that are needed in different contexts;

• Take stock of the different ways in which housing (through housing construction, urban sprawl, soil sealing, increased average living space, energy consumption, water use, pollutants, deforestation, desertification, loss of biodiversity, etc.) contributes to climate change; and

• Provide guidance on how to ensure a just transition towards a rights-compliant, climate-resilient and carbon-neutral housing.”

The key questions on which input is sought elaborate further on these areas. 

In its own submission, IHRB welcomed the Rapporteur’s focus on the links between climate change and the right to housing, at this time when the impacts are being experienced increasingly intensely in all regions – with implications for multiple human rights – and when windows for action are still open. 

The submission focuses particularly on: the right to housing in the context of climate measures (such as energy efficiency and green urban planning); the right to housing in the context of natural disaster preparedness and response; and examples of policies and practices underway to advance a just transition in the context of housing. 

IHRB elevated the ways in which there are inter-connected implications for the right to housing and for climate change at each stage of the built environment lifecycle: Land; Planning and Finance; Design; Construction; Management and Use; and Demolition/Development – drawing on the Framework for Dignity in the Built Environment. IHRB also shared with the Rapporteur a set of related materials by organisations that participated in its multi-sector workshop “Transforming the Way We Build”.