The Human Rights-Based Approach to Carbon Finance

Damilola S. Olawuyi is a senior lecturer at Afe Babalola University, Nigeria, where he is also Director of the Institute for Oil, Gas, Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development. Dr Olawuyi also provides legal advice and services as an energy lawyer with the leading global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright LLP, Canada.

• Part I. Carbon Projects and Human Rights: Introductory Context and Principles: 1. Introduction; 2. Climate change projects and human rights struggles; Part II. Mainstreaming Human Rights Safeguards into the International Legal Regime on Climate Change: 3. The concept of mainstreaming in international law; 4. The human rights mainstream paradigm and the question of approach; Part III. The Human Rights-Based Approach to Carbon Finance: Nature, Elements and Content: 5. Normative contents/elements of the human rights-based approach; 6. Legal framework for implementing the human rights-based approach to carbon finance; 7. Mobilizing structures: institutional framework for implementing the human rights-based approach to carbon finance; Part IV. From Theory to Practice: Practical Challenges, Paradoxes and Potentials of a Human Rights-Based Approach to Carbon Finance: 8. Making mainstreaming work: a three-step approach to implementation; 9. Minding the gap: practical paradoxes and barriers to the adoption of a human rights-based approach to carbon finance; 10. Implementing a human rights-based approach to carbon finance: summary for policy makers.

'Damilola S. Olawuyi has tackled the intersection of three issues of great complexity and even greater importance: the design of projects that are needed to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, and thus avoid the worst effects of climate change; the methods being used to pay for these projects; and the effect that the projects will have on the communities (often indigenous populations) that live in or near the places where these projects are carried out. This book displays a mastery of the actual problems these projects face in the real world … It also presents concrete proposals for reconciling at least some of the conflicts. Human rights and climate finance have too often been very separate spheres of study; Olawuyi has now brought them together in a way that performs a great service in helping us understand and constructively deal with the tensions between them.' Michael B. Gerrard, Andrew Sabin Professor of Professional Practice, and Director, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia Law School