October 3, 2019: IRES Faculty Seminar with Claudia Ituarte-Lima

IRES Seminar Series

Time: 12:30pm to 1:30pm (every Thursday)

Location: AERL Theatre (room 120), 2202 Main Mall

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*** VIEW SEMINAR RECORDING (Audio begins at 5:11min)***

Human rights law: at the core or periphery of sustainability transformations?

Abstract:

Debates on transformations for safeguarding nature and its vital contributions to human existence and a good quality of life have intensified with the 2019 Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) global assessment and the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) negotiations on the post-2020 global biodiversity framework to be adopted in 2020. However, the concept of transformations for sustainability remains relatively vague and abstract. In this presentation, I will argue that weaving together human rights and environmental law provides an untapped potential for operationalising these transformations but only if human rights principles are re-interpreted to match systemic social-ecological challenges such as climate change and the mass extinction of species. The presentation draws on collaborative research with examples spanning from community environmental defenders for example in Mexico and Kenya, regional frameworks such as the European Timber Regulation to international science-policy fora.

 

Claudia Ituarte

Research Associate, IRES

Bio:

Dr. Claudia Ituarte-Lima is research associate at IRES at UBC. She is also a researcher on international law at Stockholm Resilience Centre and affiliated senior researcher at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights. For more than 15 years, she has specialized in the human rights, biodiversity and climate law nexus both in theory and practice. Her focus is on law and policy for sustainability and social justice and the transformation of international law into new governance forms at national and community levels. Her methodology ranges from extensive fieldwork especially in Africa and Latin America, to studies examining the interactions of international regimes .Claudia provides expert advise to the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Environment.

Website: https://ires.ubc.ca/person/claudia-ituarte-lima/