Chapter 4 unpacks the reasons why international human rights is currently incapable of adequately protecting the environmental rights of future generations. It begins by explaining that future generations are not legally recognised as people who possess human rights and governments are not obliged to protect them. Even if those rights were recognised, there are no clear pathways for enforcing them. As the chapter explains, international human rights violations can be litigated by ‘victims’, who are people directly affected by an actual or imminent violation. The law does not allow for legal claims on behalf of people who do not yet exist or for harms that have not yet occurred or are not imminent, even though they may be foreseeable. Without standing to bring a legal action, the rights of future generations cannot be litigated and enforced within international human rights bodies. Additional challenges exist in relation to proving a breach of the law and establishing a causal connection when the alleged harm has yet to occur. Finally, the chapter explains the difficult task of balancing competing human rights interests and obligations across generations. After outlining these numerous challenges, the following chapter will offer a possible way forward.

This chapter identifies and examines the elements determining the legal content of any given theory of, or positive law provision for, the human right to resist. It reviews the primary triggers or conditions for activation, indicating the ‘right to resist what’, including ‘tyranny’, ‘oppression’, and ‘other violations’. It reviews the secondary triggers or conditions for activation, indicating the ‘right to resist when’, in particular the necessity condition. It also reviews both aspects of the personal scope, being the rights-holders, indicating ‘who may resist’, and also the duty-bearers, indicating ‘whose corresponding duty’. It identifies a four-fold typology of legitimate ‘object and purpose’, or ‘right to resist why’, being for human rights enforcement, for self-defence, for self-determination, and for ‘peace’ or human security. The final element examined is the material scope of application, or ‘right to resist how’, identifying three competing approaches to permissible means, and affirming proportionality limitations and other applicable limitations in international human rights law and international criminal law, as well as grounds for discretionary non-exercise. This general analytical template for identification and comparison of elements and therefore content is then applied to the evidence of legal sources of the right considered in Chapters 5–7.

The last chapter of the textbook briefly reflects on the road travelled so far in BHR and the challenges that still lie ahead. Despite significant acheivements in improving corporate accountability for human rights in recent years, there is still a lot to be done to improve the situation of affected rights-holders on the ground. However, in the light of the rise of right-wing populism and the global Covid-19 pandemic, the global environment for human rights protection has become more, rather than less challienging in recent years. On a positive note, businesses can be progressive forces in promoting human rights in these challenging contexts. Recent incidents of companies engaging in human rights advocacy and activism demonstrate that a growing number of companies are willing to use their leverage to push for pro-social and human rights issues. In such situations, crisis can become an opportunity for ethical renewal.