Human rights and climate change: Conceptualising a children’s rights-based approach to the climate crisis in Africa

 Nimrod Muhumuza
 LLM (Pretoria)
 Doctoral candidate, University of Western Cape, South Africa
 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2905-9976
 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

 Thabang Ramakhula
 LLD (Free State)
 Lecturer, National University of Lesotho
 https://orcid.org/0009-0003-5795-9466
 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

  The authors would like to acknowledge the research assistance of Nana Koomson. The authors also wish to thank the reviewers for their guidance and insights.

 Edition: AJCLJ 2025
 Pages: 1 - 24
 Citation: N Muhumuza & T Ramakhula ‘Conceptualising a children’s rights-based approach to the climate crisis in Africa’(2025) 1 African Journal of Climate Law and Justice 1-24
 https://doi.org/10.29053/ajclj.v2i1.0001
 Download article in PDF

Abstract: This article offers a conceptual argument for a children’s rights-based approach to climate change in Africa. While recent advocacy efforts have raised awareness of the impact of climate change on children and the need for child-sensitive responses, the philosophical basis of these approaches is not always clearly articulated. Furthermore, existing frameworks often overlook the influence of African environmental ethics and the specific position of children in that context. The article criticises the dominance of anthropocentrism in Western environmental philosophy, which prioritises human interests and justifies exploiting nature, a perspective that marginalises non-human entities and fails to adequately address children’s particular vulnerabilities. The article draws on African environmental philosophy, especially, anthropoholism and suggests an integrated framework that combines children’s rights, African ethics and non-anthropocentric models. It demonstrates that emphasising children’s rights within African ethical paradigms can bridge the divide between environmental law and human rights. The approach may offer a foundation for climate action in Africa that is inclusive and equitable, acknowledging both the vulnerability and agency of children, the value of the environment, and the importance of culturally grounded responses to the climate crisis.

Key words: African environmental philosophy; anthropoholism; children’s rights; climate change; vulnerability

1 Introduction

This article argues that a children’s rights-based approach grounded in the concept of vulnerability offers a strong ethical and legal foundation for climate action, particularly in Africa. Children’s heightened exposure to global warming demands that law and policy centre them and their rights in efforts to address climate change. Children’s rights-based approaches to climate change have gained currency on the African continent. Through advocacy and litigation, the impact of climate change on children has become clearer, as have governments’ obligations to take child-sensitive responses to global warming. Yet, the underlying philosophical premise of these responses, including that of human rights, which is sometimes assumed to be the default ethical position, is not always clear. Existing and proposed responses to the climate crisis often fail to engage with environmental ethics emerging from Africa and how these might influence a children’s rights response to global warming. The article draws from African environmental philosophy and children’s exclusion from environmental law and ethics to advance a relational and holistic ethics that recognises the interconnectedness of living and non-living beings and humanity’s moral obligations towards the environment. The article uses a historical analysis to argue for an integrated normative framework that synthesises children’s rights, African communitarian values, and non-anthropocentric models to inform a more just and effective climate response in Africa.

The article begins by discussing key environmental philosophies that have shaped and continue to influence responses to climate change on the continent. It then examines selected African ethical concepts as a bridge between human rights and environmental law, focusing on ubuntu and anthropocentrism. The article subsequently links these ethical paradigms to children’s rights through the idea of vulnerability. It proposes an integrated normative framework that centres children’s rights at the centre of climate action.

2 Major concepts in environmental philosophy

The current debate about the functions and objectives of law in the context of climate change mirrors the ethical arguments about the relationship humans should have with the natural environment that are traceable to the sixteenth century.1 Several explanations of environmental ethics emerged that still inform the direction of contemporary law and its approach to climate change. These are divided into two broad categories: anthropocentrism and non-anthropocentrism. The two main subdivisions of non-anthropocentrism are biocentrism and ecocentrism.2 Other dominant schools of environmental philosophy include animal liberation/rights theory and eco-feminism.3 The philosophical foundations of environmental ethics are rooted in understanding how we value the environment. While these philosophical categories have been instrumental in shaping environmental law and the global response to climate change, they rarely feature the experiences or rights of children, despite incontrovertible evidence of the risk they face.4

2.1 Anthropocentrism

Anthropocentrism has been the dominant Western perspective in explaining humankind’s relationship with the environment since the sixteenth century, following the scientific revolution.5 Anthropocentrism regards humans as the source of all value, creating a dualism and separation between humankind and nature.6 Anthropocentrism denotes the attitude, values and practices prioritising human interests over non-human, non-living, or even non-sentient beings or objects in the natural world.7 In other words, humans stand apart from nature, and nature is only valuable for its instrumental value, such as the provision of resources, including fossil fuels.8 Anthropocentrism is grounded in the liberal tradition of individualism and rational thinking and, therefore, has limited applicability to animals and is of little value to non-sentient objects.9 This largely explains why in the majority of countries across the world, environmental rights are framed to benefit human beings.10

2.1.1 Anthropocentrism and climate change

Anthropocentrism justifies wanton ecological destruction and the exploitation of nature. Commercial agriculture and animal farming are singled out as prime examples. Domestic ruminant animals account for approximately one-third of global methane emissions.11 Sheltering and feeding them requires the destruction of large tracts of natural climate sinks, such as forests, interfering with the natural process of carbon capture.12 These ecological consequences, including the suffering inflicted on domestic animals for human consumption, are justified based on the need to satisfy human interests and preferences.13 Anthropocentrism also explains the slow progress in addressing climate change despite the prodigious amount of knowledge and technological innovations humans possess to tackle this problem.14

Insofar as it relates to the causes of climate change, the anthropocentric view of the world is the product of one particular segment of society out of many. In other words, some humans are more blameworthy than others, and there is a difference between those who emit for necessity and those who emit for luxury.15 Thus, it is vital to be specific about exactly ‘who’ anthropocentrism impacts. Indigenous peoples, women, racialised groups and children do not necessarily share the same liability for the climate crisis as the world’s largest polluting states and corporations.16

That said, the environmental rights provisions in the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC),17 the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (African Children’s Charter)18 and the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (African Women’s Protocol)19 are anthropocentric. Article 24 of CRC enjoins state parties to take appropriate measures to realise children’s rights to the highest attainable standard of health, considering the dangers and risks of environmental pollution.’ State parties must also ensure that children are taught the advantages of environmental sanitation. This provision is replicated almost identically in article 14 of the African Children’s Charter. Both treaties also provide that states must ensure that the education of the child is directed to ‘the development of respect for the environment and natural resources’. The African Women’s Protocol provides that women and girls have the right to equal access to housing and acceptable living conditions in a healthy environment. It also contains the most detailed substantive binding provision on the right to the environment at the global level in article 18.

3 Ecocentrism

Ecocentrism is an environmental philosophy that unites the spiritual, scientific and metaphysical trends in environmental protection.20 Although formally coined by Aldo Leopold in the twentieth century in his Land ethic, the concept is thousands of years old and has been with humanity since we evolved.21 Many indigenous communities, including African communities, have lived ‘sustainably’ in harmony with nature.22 Studies detail certain features critical to this sustainability, such as small populations in a close-knit community; binding rituals; restorative conflict resolution; foraging habits; the use of medicinal plants; organic agriculture; reliance on solar energy; taboos on overhunting; among others.23 Ecocentrism views the eco-sphere – all of earth’s ecosystems, atmosphere, water, and land – as the matrix that gave birth to all life and is the sole source of life’s existence.24

The unifying theme in the philosophy of ecocentrism is that nature’s intrinsic value is worth protecting, regardless of its utility or relevance to humanity.25 Some have suggested that the former should give way when human necessities conflict with the planet’s health.26 At its core, ecocentrism is about removing humanity from the centre of the ecological universe and replacing it with nature.27 In contrast to anthropocentrism, it extends moral understanding to encompass supra-individual wholes, including entire species and ecosystems.28 Ecocentrists argue that environmental despoliation, including that brought on by climate change and global warming,29 is immeasurably more significant for the harm it inflicts on nature than viewing it as a loss of goods valuable to humanity.30 Remedial actions to the environmental crises that call for large-scale societal change are rooted in the philosophy of eco-centrism.31 On the value of ecocentrism to climate change, Rowe observes:32

[Ecocentrism] is not an anti-human argument nor a put-down of those seeking social justice. It does not deny that myriad significant homocentric problems exist. However, it stands aside from these more minor, short-term issues to consider the ecological reality. It comprehends the Ecosphere as a Being that transcends in importance any single species, even the self-named sapient one.

3.1 Ecocentrism and climate change

There is increasing momentum towards enshrining rights of nature, as an ecocentric approach, into law as a legal response to climate change.33 At the international level, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution led by Bolivia in 2009, declaring 22 April International Mother Earth Day.34 The Resolution calls for ‘harmony with nature and the planet to balance present and future generations’ economic, social, and environmental needs’.35 Some momentum is also observable at the national level. The Ecuadorian Constitution,36 Bolivian legislation,37 Indigenous Peoples in Canada and local laws in some states have provided for justiciable rights of nature.38 Countries in the Global South have endorsed the right to a healthy environment for two reasons.39 The first is their disproportionate exposure to environmental and human rights harm from ‘extractive and polluting industries that benefit northern states, transnational corporations and national elites’.40 The second reason is the influence of traditional and indigenous laws, ethics and world views that regard humans as an integral part of nature.’41 However, rights of nature protections cannot be effective in the face of deeply entrenched corporate-driven neoliberal and political-economic interests worldwide, including in Africa.42 African governments’ priorities remain job creation and poverty alleviation,43 and their approach to climate change reflects these concerns.44

4 Biocentrism

A biocentric approach to environmentalism, environmental protection and environmental rights asserts that humans owe moral obligations to sentient beings.45 Humans are considered members of the Earth’s community of life, holding that membership on the same terms as applied to all non-human members.46 Biocentrism enables humans to meet their basic needs in exceptional circumstances.47 Proponents of biocentrism view environmental protection through the prism of the richness and diversity of life as worthy of protection in themselves. They argue that human beings do not have a right to utilise natural resources other than to satiate their core needs.48 Biocentrists, therefore, perceive the need for the aforementioned cultural diversity and the differences in social arrangements as conditions precedent for the planet’s survival.49

There are divided opinions on the usefulness of the rights framework regarding biocentrism. One assessment argues that the rights doctrine does not add value to how humans view and interact with the environment.50 This view rejects the notions of rights and argues that if nature is a rights-holder, it loses its aesthetic quality and is not deemed part of humanity. Relatedly, proponents of this view also reject the idea that the natural world must rely on legal language to be ‘seen and heard’.51 The other, less stringent view of biocentrism, as expressed in some national constitutional provisions, particularly in Latin America, regarding the protection of the environment, is one in which nature is considered a rights holder.52 The traditional common law approach to environmental conservation, which ties environmental protection to an individual rights holder, is considered untenable under this approach.53

The utility of biocentrism to climate change lies in the moral standing of non-human organisms in the ecosphere.54 Scholars have criticised biocentrism for its silence on whether ecosystems have value beyond that assigned to non-human organisms.55 Non-living, non-human parts of the eco-sphere, such as salt flats, bogs or savannas, which are also threatened by climate change, are not within the environmental protection envisioned by biocentrism.56 Nonetheless, biocentrism’s influence and impact on climate change are similar to that of ecocentrism discussed above.

5 African environmental philosophy as a bridge

5.1 Between humans and the environment: An irreconcilable choice?

International law is gradually progressing towards recognition of the right to the environment.57 An international right to the environment would go a long way towards clearing up some of the normative confusion that plagues international environmental law regarding climate change. The implementation of sustainable development is characterised as a choice between an eco-centric approach,58 which centres nature as the core beneficiary of the paradigm, and an anthropocentric approach, which centres human beings.59 This dichotomy portrays anthropocentrism as ethically flawed and incapable of producing sustainable outcomes.60 In other words, the need to achieve sustainable development requires the integration of potentially conflicting demands.61 Two key variants of sustainable development models are proposed: the economic growth model and the human needs-centred model.62 Economic growth focuses on states and corporations, whereas the human needs-centred model addresses the fundamental requirements for human well-being and thriving.63 The argument for humans to be the centre of sustainable development requires that economic growth is subordinated to social and ecological needs in cases of conflict.64 The rationale is that economic growth is a ‘desire’ while ecological and social imperatives are required to survive.65

5.2 Climate change and African environmental ethics

Academia and policy makers have long ignored or marginalised African environmental ethics.66 The international climate change discourse has long ignored people’s values, beliefs and world views, paying lip service to the importance of equity and global security.67 The field of African environmental ethics does not neatly fit into any of the three major strands of environmental philosophy articulated above. Some scholars suggest that African environmental philosophy is biocentric, ascribing inherent value to all living beings.68 Others believe that ecocentrism best describes Africans’ relationship with the environment, given that ecocentrism recognises the importance of the entire eco-community.69 Some scholars describe African environmental values as eco-bio-communitarian, premised on the interdependence and peaceful coexistence between the earth, plants, and humans.70 The African environmental ethics espouses a holistic rather than an atomistic approach to the environment. Human beings are in and part of a vibrant, interconnected ‘whole’ from which they cannot detach themselves.71 In a direct riposte to capitalist ideology, African environmental philosophy rejects the private ownership of land by a few individuals.72 Land belongs to gods, the community of the living dead (colloquially referred to as ancestors), the living and future generations.73

Value is attributed to the ecosystem as a whole, encompassing both living and non-living, non-human entities, rather than just human beings who are merely constituent members.74 African world views teach that natural resources and ecosystems should not be exploited beyond their sustainable limits.75 The environment must be taken care of for the benefit of present and future human generations, as well as the well-being of non-human entities.76 Environmental conservation benefits all living beings, including humans, non-human animals and the natural world, all of which are interconnected.77 African environmental ethics eschew the premise of anthropocentrism as a philosophical justification for environmental conservation.78 This is critical because it compels us to examine how we can utilise anthropocentric human or children’s rights to guide societal and individual actions in mitigating the effects of climate change.79 African environmental ethics gives value to inanimate beings of nature, beyond the instrumental role they play in human survival. This interpretation might have been regarded as unscientific a few decades ago.80 Recently, there has been a shift towards recognising the role of Indigenous or traditional values and knowledge in stemming the ecological crisis.81 This shift requires articulating an African environmental philosophy that might help address climate change. Kelbessa notes that African policy makers have not paid significant attention to ethical principles related to climate change.82 As a result, the debate on climate change and human rights has thus far been dominated by non-African scientific, technical and economic analyses. As Owalabi observes:83

Every society within the global community must dip into its value system to construct an environmental ethic that will usher in a new environmental order. Every society has its own culture of reacting to the environment and every society should approach those problems according to the way they manifest.

5.3 Climate change: Children’s rights and African environmental ethics

The human needs-centred model is not necessarily inconsistent with promoting ecological preservation. The epistemological and ontological framing of human rights and the environment in Africa necessitates a deeper understanding of this relationship.84 Under African environmental philosophy, all components of the environment, living beings and non-living beings, have moral standing, but on a sliding scale.85 According to Behrens:86

African thought extends moral considerability to include all beings that are a part of the interconnected web of life, that is, all individual living things, groups of living things such as families, species and ecosystems, as well as inanimate natural objects such as rivers and mountains.

This personification of the environment is oriented towards sustaining good relations with the natural environment.87 Moral status is accorded to non-human beings and/or inanimate resources of nature beyond the role they play in the survival of human beings.88 The degree of importance is determined, among other factors, by sentience, the ability to influence other beings, and vulnerability.89 Sub-Saharan African ethical values prioritise relationality as the foundation for assigning value to constituents of the environment.90 Whereas all members of the ecosystem have value, the more a being can engage with and in a certain communal relationship, the greater its moral stature and, therefore, the greater the duty owed to it. 91

A being has moral status as it can be part of a communal relationship. Community in the African sense refers to those living and dead, animals and the living dead or ancestors.92 Exhibiting solidarity with one another primarily involves engaging in mutual aid and acting in the best interest of one another.93 This view contrasts with traditional Western thought, which accords moral status only to beings that reciprocate with one another.94 Several African philosophies speak to this solidarity, compassion, justice, reciprocity, dignity and harmony, such as ubuntu, the most widely known, from the Nubian desert to the Cape of Good Hope and from Senegal to Zanzibar.95 Similar concepts exist across the continent, such as in the Kenyang language in Manyu, Cameroon,96 Ukama, which means relatedness in Shona,97 or Omoluwabi in Yoruba, Nigeria,98 and the Gadaa system among the Oromo peoples of Ethiopia.99 Metz uses two examples to illustrate this point. A severely mentally incapacitated human being is elevated beyond an animal that may have identical internal abilities, and a new-born infant might have greater moral status than a mid-to-late-stage fetus.100

5.3.1 Ubuntu as a mediating ethic to the climate crisis

Ubuntu is a South African philosophy derived from the Nguni languages of Southern Africa, such as Xhosa, which has the expression umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye Bantu, loosely translated to mean ‘a person is a person through other people’.101 While ubuntu appears to be only related to relations between humans, its application is much broader.102 Various interpretations and expositions of ubuntu exist, and it is neither possible nor desirable to adequately interrogate them here; suffice it to say that ubuntu connotes ideas of humanness, social justice and fairness.103 It requires balancing the interests of society, including the need to live in a healthy environment, against those of the individual.104 South African courts have embraced ubuntu as a key cornerstone in interpreting the country’s Constitution, ordering its society and strengthening its democracy, firmly establishing it as a critical interpretative tool.105 South Africa’s Constitutional Court has interpreted ubuntu as part of the country’s ‘rainbow heritage’, describing the significance of group solidarity, compassion, respect, dignity, conformity to basic norms and collective unity.106 In this regard, Le Grange advises that ubuntu is an ideal framework for all policies and practices to address the pressing environmental problems facing South Africa.107

At the regional level, ubuntu and its applicability to climate action is visible in the wording of article 24 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Charter) – the first regional human rights instrument with binding environmental obligations. Article 24 provides that ‘all peoples shall have the right to a general satisfactory environment favourable to their development’.108 At this juncture, it is noteworthy that the provision breaks with conventional wording of the subject of human rights – the individual – to guarantee the right for ‘peoples’. The African Charter does not define ‘peoples’, but the term may connote a whole population of a country, or a part of the population bound together by cultural, linguistic, ethnic or other factors.109 This designation reflects the ubuntu principle of conserving and protecting the environment for the benefit of society, not just the individual. This formulation implies that nature and its resources cannot be utilised with unbridled abandon.110 The African Charter requires the rights under its article 24 to be ‘exercised with due regard to the rights of others, collective security, morality and common interest’.111

The anthropocentric-oriented exploitation of nature and the capitalist-driven commodification of natural resources contrast with the prescribed interconnectedness inherent in ubuntu. One who becomes a person through others, including our natural environment, cannot misuse natural resources to satisfy selfish needs or greed.112 Ubuntu prescribes a lifestyle based on sufficiency, permitting the individual and the wider community to utilise natural resources to meet their basic needs. Nature is not commodified and exploited to satisfy self-interest.113 An ubuntu-driven response to climate change at the global, regional and local levels would animate solidarity with our fellow planetary inhabitants and inform a universal paradigm shift encompassing communitarianism, respect for nature, and future generations. This is only possible if ubuntu and similar approaches, such as Senghor’s Negritude114 or Buen Vivir from Latin America,115 are harnessed and integrated with other values to address the climate crisis.116 Negritude evinces a revised view of the world beyond the diversity of its forms to counter the immorality of violence to nature, which it considers violence against humanity.117 It evokes an ethical consideration for restoring despoiled ecosystems and resistance against destructive extractivism, fuelling today’s climate crisis.118

In Latin America, Buen Vivir, which translates to ‘good living’ or ‘living well’, is a concept and way of living that ‘denotes, organises and constructs a system of knowledge and living based on the communion of humans and nature and on the spatial-temporal-harmonious totality of existence’.119 It demands an ethically different relationship with nature – community-centric, ecologically balanced and culturally sensitive.120 As a means of societal ordering, Buen Vivir is based on ethical values rather than economic ones, rejecting the commodification of humans, land and nature.121 It is based on the idea that the community’s well-being is inextricably linked to that of the individual. In other words, individuality prevalent in the Western conception of human rights is expressed through complementarity with other beings in the group, and tempered by the needs of broader society.122 Buen Vivir has been incorporated into the 2008 Constitution of Ecuador under Title II, Chapter Two as ‘rights of the good way of living’ and the 2009 Constitution of Bolivia as vivir bien under article 8.123 The concern from some quarters is about the justiciability of these concepts and their ability to inform human and children’s rights standards in the context of climate change.124 The following part explores how ubuntu, Buen Vivir and related ethical traditions can be meaningfully integrated into normative frameworks governing children’s rights and climate obligations.

6 Anthropoholism as an African environmental ethic

Chemhuru argues that environmental philosophy and ethical thinking in sub-Saharan Africa are informed by teleological and normative conceptions that grant nature, including human beings, non-human living beings such as animals and plants, and non-living beings such as air, water and soils, ethical standing.125 In his view, the teleological and ethical basis for respecting nature is twofold: First, it is where human beings find their habitat and, second, nature itself must live and flourish and achieve its purpose for existence and well-being.126 The purpose of nature includes supporting the well-being and survival of both human and non-human living beings and, therefore, human beings must have duties to nature to ensure its well-being and flourishing.127 Granting moral status and legal rights to nature is not novel. It is encapsulated in the growing rights-of-nature movement.128 Rights-of-nature proponents advocate the rights of natural communities, ecosystems and other natural entities that are alive or sustain life, such as mountains, rivers and Mother Earth.129 The rights-of-nature movement posits that entities with value for their own sake, rather than the value they provide others, can have rights.130 Chemhuru argues that the moral status of human and non-human animals is not similar (note that he does not use the word ‘equal’) to that of human beings.131 Human beings occupy a higher ontological level than animals and plants due to their varied capacities for purpose and greater ability to communicate and make informed choices.132

Anthropoholism is an African environmental ethics that draws from environmental philosophy’s anthropocentric and holistic strands.133 Central to anthropoholism is the idea that humans are an integral part of the environment and are not inherently above or superior to other beings.134 Owing to their enhanced capacity for rationality, only humans can bear this duty to look after the environment sustainably, including recognising and guaranteeing the ‘rights’ that attend to living non-human beings, such as animal rights.135 This duty articulates a symbiotic relationship between human beings and nature. Ifeakor and Otteh argue that this duty is obligatory.136 Bielefeldt terms it as ‘the inescapable anthropocentrism of responsibility’ because humans are the only members of the environment that can recognise rights.137

Humans are the only constituent members of the environment who can ask, think and do.138 It is doubtful that this grants humans ‘pride of place’ in the ecosphere, as Ifeakor and Otteh suggest.139 This obligation is not targeted at the satisfaction of human ends, human benefit, or economic enrichment, but towards the African concept of holism – survival of the whole ecosystem. The purpose of obligatory anthropoholism is holistic, and humans are the only agents who can fulfil this end.140

The duty or obligation to look after the environment sustainably is manifested in the African Charter, albeit in anthropocentric terms. The African Charter guarantees peoples the right to dispose of their wealth and natural resources freely, and this right shall be exercised in their exclusive interest.141 The Charter further recognises the right of all peoples to a general satisfactory environment favourable to their development.142 The African Charter also imposes duties on family, society and other legally recognised communities. These rights and freedoms shall be exercised with due regard to the rights of others, collective security, morality and common interest.143 As observed earlier, the African Children’s Charter has similar provisions. It requires children’s education to be directed towards developing respect for the environment and natural resources. The African Children’s Charter also imposes a duty to preserve and strengthen African cultural values, including those relevant to environmental protection, and to contribute to the moral well-being of society.144

As Chemhuru rightly contends, the communitarian ethics imbued in these two instruments imposes duties to preserve the environment for the benefit of broader society.145 However, if compromises and trade-offs are required between these two value systems, what are they, and how can they be achieved? Tladi argues that this balancing act requires us to note the following: None of the models excludes the relevance of the central values of the other models; both economic growth and human-centred needs are or can be anthropocentric; and there is a divergence of law and policy on the international plane.146

Key international rights instruments primarily reflect the human-centred needs model, while the practice of ‘hard’ international law tends to promote economic growth. The climate change regime decisively favours the economic growth model for so-called sustainable development.147 Developed countries are reluctant to make large-scale changes to their economic structures for fear of losing competitiveness with one another.148 Developing countries, such as South Africa, aim to maintain momentum towards poverty eradication, job creation and the provision of housing and electricity by maintaining the status quo, despite warnings from scientists that this approach is detrimental to efforts to combat climate change.149

Scholars have developed the so-called ‘weak sustainability’ and ‘strong sustainability’ to denote anthropocentric-centred and eco-centric initiatives towards sustainable development, respectively.150 Under the weak sustainability model, the spatial, temporal and integration models of sustainable development are considered equal.151 However, because human interests are central to the model, the environment is protected for its instrumental value to humans.152 Ecocentrists have criticised this model for undergirding the destruction of the environment that has led to ecological disasters that are now worsened by climate change.153 The argument goes that if sections of the environment are not helpful for human use, they are dispensable and, therefore, prone to destruction and/or eradication.154 Like the anthropocentrism it underpins, this model does not protect species and ecosystems of no present or potential interest to humankind.155

The strong sustainability model prioritises the ecological system over all other human or economic considerations.156 Social needs and justice must be seen as part of the ecological system, or are subject to the needs and survival of the ecological system.157 Tladi suggests that this position is inflexible, noting that there are no compromises and trade-offs because ecology always has primacy.158 In other words, ecology is central and, in case of conflict, ecological interests prevail.159

This model has been championed by scholars and environmentalists alike, who are unconvinced of the value, ethics and morality of using an anthropocentric approach to dealing with ecological crises and climate change.160 In this debate, the question becomes whether ecology must take precedence over human concerns to achieve sustainable development, specifically sustainable human development.161 It is debatable whether a human needs-centred model of sustainable development, which provides a foundation for applying a human rights framework to environmental protection, is insufficient, given that it promotes species chauvinism.162 While opinion is divided, this analysis agrees with Tladi’s assessment that a human needs-centred approach does not necessarily preclude the protection of nature for its intrinsic value.163

6.1 Anthropoholism and children’s rights

The anthropoholistic environmental ethics is contended to be compatible with the human rights and children’s rights framework. The human rights framework is an ethical approach drawing from widely accepted, coherent and well-developed legal norms. Part of its advantage is that it places human beings most affected by climate change,164 such as children, at the centre of its analysis. It moves the imperative to act on climate change from the scientific to the moral realm, creating a duty to act out of collective self-interest. It also has strong connections to mechanisms of implementation and enforcement.165 Caney argues for prioritising human rights as an ethical approach to climate because it is grounded in persons’ humanity; it represents moral thresholds below which no conduct is permitted; it promotes respect for every individual and takes general priority over other values.166 Scholars further argue, in classic Western liberal tradition, that human rights focus on humans as individuals, not humans in the aggregate.167

The advantages of the human rights framework ought to be combined with the benefits of other ethical systems, such as ubuntu, Negritude and Buen Vivir, as a basis for addressing climate change. This approach combines the utility of existing indigenous/traditional knowledge on addressing climate change with obligatory conduct that human rights require. Second, it prioritises communities’ experiences and how they respond to climate change with localised solutions. This integrated approach elevates the interests of the ‘weakest and most vulnerable’, maximising overall welfare.

6.2 Anthropoholism, children’s rights and vulnerability

The children’s rights framework comports with the duty to address the needs of those most vulnerable to climate change, also found in the relational ethics of African environmental philosophy. The concept of vulnerability brings real-life experiences to human rights law.168 Vulnerability describes segments of the population that are or should be recipients of extra care and attention. Timmer and others argue that the rights framework is essential in revealing the various dimensions of human suffering associated with continued environmental degradation and realising justice.169

The human rights framework – and how it deals with vulnerability – is critical: While everyone is vulnerable, some, such as children, are more vulnerable than others.170 In tandem with the concept of anthropoholism, vulnerability can also inform ‘an ontological stance away from a human-centred, neo-liberal, and impregnably Western understanding of human rights’.171 Vulnerability in the context of climate change requires recognising that although everyone is susceptible to climate change, some are more vulnerable than others.172 Children’s vulnerability has been recognised on several grounds, including ‘their status and inability to secure the protection of their rights’.173 Some statistics can bear this situation out. The right to survive and thrive, to learn and grow, is still not realised for millions of children with disabilities, indigenous children and stateless children.174 The UN estimates that 570 million children are deprived of dignity and the right to an adequate standard of living.175 Nearly 17 000 children under the age of five years die every day; 58 million children of primary school age are not in school, with as many as 250 million failing to learn basic literacy or numeracy as a result of the poor quality of education.176 The inadequate development outcomes reflected by those numbers are created by a ripple effect associated with inequality and discrimination, and compounded by inter- and intra-generational cycles of poverty.177 Identifying vulnerability mandates particular attention from states and gives rise to protection duties.178 Thus, it becomes clear that children’s rights, particularly as countries start drafting and/or implementing their responses to climate change, must account for their vulnerability in addition to environmental conservation.179 The inequality and discrimination that confront children and compel them to live below their full potential are caused by poor policy decisions that do not prioritise the realisation of children’s rights, regardless of the face of extreme poverty, marginalisation and vulnerability.180

Climate change responses must be consistent with the general principles of non-discrimination, the child’s best interests, the right to life, survival and development, and the right to be heard. These responses must also account for the fact that children constitute one-third of the world’s population, with almost half of the child population living in poverty.181 The factors that affect children’s right to survival, such as poverty, are multidimensional and intergenerational and are being exacerbated by the effects of climate change.182 Failure to address them in one area will have a ripple, cyclical effect. For instance, failure to provide access to quality education will lead to stagnation in social mobility,183 which increases a child’s chances of falling into or staying in poverty. In some cases, where guardians or parents prefer boys to go to school, girls will often find themselves discriminated against and kept out of opportunities that education provides.184

The integrated and holistic nature of anthropoholism mirrors the indivisible, mutually reinforcing nature of the rights of the child and all human rights.185 A human rights-based approach is vital to realising economic, social and cultural rights. Despite the differences in the process, states are unified in the recognition that their response to climate change will involve adjusting their economic and environmental priorities.186 This problem is bound to come to the fore, especially in countries such as South Africa that have to deal with increasing unemployment levels, stubborn levels of poverty and alarming levels of inequality. Children, who are already vulnerable, are likely to suffer the consequences of a climate change response that fails to cater to their rights and needs.

CRC is the most ratified international treaty,187 with all states except the United States of America bound by it.188 Nearly all of its 196 state parties are also bound by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).189 However, in tandem with other UN human rights treaties that omit an explicit right to a healthy environment, CRC only scarcely refers to environmental issues directly and does not mention climate change. CRC should not be criticised in isolation, given that the prevailing milieu of international law is still too generic to have concrete legal implications.

CRC has adopted General Comments relevant to climate change initiatives. General Comment 26 on children’s rights and the environment, focusing on climate change, is one of the most authoritative interpretations of states’ duties to take climate action under CRC.190 General Comment 26 asserts that ‘a clean and sustainable environment is both a human right and necessary for the full enjoyment of a broad range of children’s rights’.191 General Comment 15 addressed the need for a ‘growing understanding of the impact of climate change on children’s health’.192 The General Comment was drafted to interpret article 24 in light of environmental issues and climate change,193 with CRC stating that ‘given the relevance of the environment, beyond environmental pollution, to children’s health’ and that environmental interventions should, among others, address climate change, as this is one of the biggest threats to children’s health and exacerbates health disparities.194 States, therefore, should put children’s health concerns at the centre of their climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies.’195 Other General Comments also address climate change in terms of the risks of pollution and natural disasters, the importance of a healthy and safe environment and the right to survival and development.196

The African Children’s Charter omits provisions for the right to a healthy environment. However, its Preamble explicitly acknowledges the relationship between climate change and sustainable development. It notes with concern that ‘the situation of most African children remains critical due to the unique factors of their socio-economic, cultural, traditional and developmental circumstances, natural disasters’.197 The main text does not reference environmental protection, climate change or sustainable development. These concepts have to be ‘read into the text’, so to speak, by analysis of some of its provisions. The African Children’s Charter mirrors CRC in setting norms that guide the interpretation of its provisions: non-discrimination, right to survival and development, best interests of the child, and participation. Realising these goals while responding to climate change requires that development be undertaken alongside children’s rights protection.

In the ‘weak anthropocentrism’ model discussed above, ‘development’ is not confined to economic growth. It also requires and includes lifting the world’s most impoverished populations out of poverty, allowing them to lead decent and dignified lives without necessarily causing irreparable environmental damage. As Tladi points out, in societies such as those in Africa, with staggering numbers of poverty, unemployment and income-inequality, the needs of children experiencing poverty are not and should not be marginalised and considered less important than the environment.198 Today’s generation has no right to decide what species or ecosystems benefit or interest future generations. Intergenerational equity is integral to ecologically sustainable development, as it allows future generations to determine their own needs and interests.199 Indeed, no person will be willing to save environmental resources for tomorrow if they cannot meet their basic needs today.200

Anthropoholism and the children’s rights framework require the integration of social, environmental and economic concerns in policy making to address climate change.201 It also necessitates optimal resource management to maximise the net benefit of economic development, conditioned on the preservation of services and the quality of natural resources. In the social context, sustainable development often means that men, women and children are the centre of attention, and development should be woven around people. The common thread running through most of these concepts is the linkage between economic growth and environmental standards in the context of improving human social conditions.

Anthropoholism and vulnerability can mediate the relationship and ostensible tension between economic development, environmental protection and social equity for vulnerable populations.202 Indeed, sustainable development is structurally conceived as a temple-like structure with three pillars: international environmental law, international human rights law and international economic law. International environmental law is said to be its central pillar.203 The phrase ‘sustainable development’ first appeared in a publication entitled World Conservation Strategy: Living Resource Conservation for Sustainable Development which stated in its foreword: ‘In their quest for economic development and enjoyment of the riches of nature, human beings must come to terms with the reality of resource limitation and the carrying capacity of ecosystems. They must take account of the needs of future generations.’204

Therefore, there must be a conscious and conscientious effort to transform the material conditions of African children. Work to stem the environmental crisis must be accompanied by the realisation of children’s socio-economic rights. The appropriate starting point for addressing climate change in Africa must integrate the protection of natural resources with the imperative to emancipate and rehabilitate the majority of the continent’s children who are in want. This was recognised by the Brundtland Commission report in its observation that ‘poverty pollutes the environment, creating environmental stress differently’.205

The UNFCCC provisions and general international climate law affirm that responses to climate change should involve a coordinated and integrated response from the fields of social and economic development.206 These measures must be in tandem with national development programmes. Solutions to climate change require the integration of social, environmental and economic concerns in policy decisions.207 Prioritising human development and environmental protection is not an irreconcilable choice. Indeed, the ‘concurrent attainment of both human development and environmental protection can only ever be at the level of rhetoric … real-life situations almost always require trade-offs’.208 Disproportionate attention to one category at the expense of another would lead to a ‘truncated human reality’.209 The question for debate, therefore, is not so much conceptual but practical. In this scenario, human and children’s rights are the bedrock of a synthesised approach to climate action.

7 Conclusion

This article has argued that a children’s rights-based approach to climate change is informed by African environmental ethics such as ubuntu and anthropoholism. It offers a legitimate and culturally resonant framework for climate action in Africa. The article has demonstrated that limitations of the dominant paradigms lie in their inability to address the complex vulnerabilities of children in a world affected by global warming. By relying on African philosophical traditions that emphasise interdependence, communal obligation and harmony with nature, this article shows that environmental law can be enriched by ethical insights that centre on human dignity and ecological balance. These ethical systems provide a new and transformative lens through which to pursue climate justice if combined with the legal obligations enshrined in international and regional children’s rights instruments. Ultimately, this integrated approach challenges the false dichotomy between development and environmental sustainability and reorients climate action towards the simultaneous fulfilment of children’s rights, ecological conservation and intergenerational equity.