| dc.description.abstract | Climate change challenges human rights (HRs) "as the dominant language of justice." A HRs and climate change discourse has accepted this challenge but this discourse remains marginal – both in traditionally-technocratic international climate policy and debates around transitions to ‘green economies’ (the transition discourse). This reflects HRs’ marginal status vis-à-vis the environment, development and economics generally. Suggesting these are HRs issues is a reframing of traditional approaches, raising questions of whether HRs are relevant in assisting transitions to low-carbon societies. This thesis explores what role HRs can play in the transition to a 'green economy,' seeking reconciliation of the HRs and climate change discourse with relevant strands of the transition discourse, especially 'Just Transition' (JT), a demand from the international labour movement. Using a transdisciplinary approach and the insights of critical theory (particularly the difference between 'problem-solving' and 'critical' theories), this thesis examines hegemonic and counter-hegemonic strands of the transition discourse, outlining JT. JT is a contested normative marker open to problem-solving and critical interpretations. Likewise, a problem-solving, legalistic HRs approach restricts HRs’ role in climate and transition discourses, insufficiently addressing climate change’s scope and severity. More critical, structural HRs approaches – including solidarity rights and cosmopolitanist theories, and human rights-based approaches (HRBAs) to development – can play a significant role in broadening critical JT strands, stressing transnational social forces and institutions, ecological limits, HRs thresholds, disaggregation, participation and accountability. Ultimately, these emphasise that existing HRs demand rapid climate action regardless of other climate agreements. Thus, HRs’ role in JT is to define more clearly what is 'just' in JT, offering clearer normative standards in a broader, internationalist approach that overcomes JT’s proneness to vagueness, parochialism and proceduralism; however, where HRs overlook agency, work’s centrality, and wider economic structures, JT’s critical traditions highlight workers, communities and social movements. Together, a HRBA to JT (HRBAJT) provides a critical analytical framework and basis for action for rapid, effective and just transitions. This framework is then applied to Norway – which maintains a high profile in climate negotiations while remaining a major oil and gas exporter – where five main contradictions of Norwegian climate policy are outlined. Fundamentally, it is argued Norway’s petroleum industry and domestic carbon-intensive development not only put HRs around the world at risk from climate change but, given dependence on a non-renewable resource, mean that Norwegian HRs are increasingly insecure. A HRBAJT sees the role of HRs in JT as benchmarks for societal transformation within ecological limits. | eng |