Colloquium: Katja Achermann
Wednesday, May 24, 2023, at 12.15 - 13.15
HG D 3.2 or online, Zoom | Sign up here
Human Rights and Climate Change – The Role of Science and Scientists
In light of states’ continuing inaction, activists are increasingly turning to courts for protection against the adverse impacts of climate change. A great number of applications brought before domestic and international courts and bodies thereby rely on international human rights law, which inter alia protects the rights to life and to personal integrity threatened by climate change. After a brief overview of pending and decided cases, this presentation intends to examine the role that science and scientists have or should have played in human rights-based arguments for the adoption of mitigation and adaption measures by both lawyers and judges. It thereby also highlights the challenges and opportunities of human rights-based arguments in the fight against climate change.
About Katja Achermann
Katja Achermann is currently finalising her PhD at the Faculty of Law/Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on state cooperation for the protection of human rights against transnational threats thereto, including in particular climate change. She is also a SNF-funded postdoctoral researcher at the Chair de droit international public et droit européen at the University of Fribourg, examining the human right to science. Katja Achermann is a lecturer teaching public international law at the University of St. Gallen. She is also admitted to the bar in Switzerland and regularly advises clients in strategic litigation cases for the NGO humanrights.ch. Katja Achermann holds an LLM degree from the University of Cambridge, an MSc in political theory from the London School of Economics and Political Science and an MA in law from the university of St. Gallen.