Child Rights and Climate Change: Litigative Avenues for Australian Children

摘要

In 2019, children around the world made history by walking out of school in the largest globally orchestrated climate change protest. The protest movement alone failed to incentivise governments to adjust their climate change policies, resulting in an explosion in child climate change litigants in both domestic and international courts. Building on the "rights turn" in climate change litigation, these cases have increasingly incorporated human and child rights-based arguments. Until recently, Australia was a notable absentee from this trend. However, this changed at a domestic level when Queensland enacted the Human Rights Act 2019 (Qld), where child rights-based arguments are currently being tested in the Youth Verdict v Waratah Coal case. It may also change at the international level if Greta Thunberg and 15 other petitioners are successful in their "communication" under the Optional Protocol on a Communications Procedure to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.