Zemi Research Convention 2024“The Integration of Human Rights into International Environmental Law and its Implications”

Ochi Seminar (team name: Environmental Justice Analysts)
Satake (Quirk) Taro, Nakamura Toshiki, Nabill Nuqman, Miles Brain Mariano-Ortilla

We interviewed the members of the Ochi seminar (Professor OCHI Megumi), who presented " The Integration of Human Rights into International Environmental Law and its Implications " at the Zemi Research Convention 2024.

Please let us know about your seminar.

Our seminar under Professor Ochi Megumi deals with all aspects of international law from areas like the Environment to War and Crime. Our seminar does a lot of interesting coordination with universities like Ritsumeikan APU and does coordinated events like our semesterly joint thesis presentation seminar that we conduct. Furthermore, we engage in working towards educating more individuals on the concepts of international law by working with places like the Ritsumeikan Peace Museum to create temporary exhibits on our posters about different aspects of international law.

Please let us know about your instructor.

Our professor, Ochi Megumi is really invested in her seminar students and the fields they’re researching despite them all being in different areas of international law. Our professor works very hard in supporting her students and working to help create creative events like our joint thesis seminar with APU to keep us thinking forward and help develop this interesting field of international law.

Please give details of your Zemi Research Convention presentation.

Our Zemi Research Convention presentation revolves around the concept of international environmental law and whether or not including human rights within it would help individuals who are effected by climate related events. Throughout the global south, people are effected by destructive climate events like flooding, typhoons, monsoons and many more. These events have been becoming more constant due to the effects of climate change, thus many people on the ground who are effected need help from international institutions. Despite this currently none of the international environmental law conventions have any mention of the individuals on the ground. These conventions like the Paris Agreement, Kyoto Protocol and the UNFCCC need to include human rights to help with these sort of situations. Thus, our presentation delves into the mechanisms of more specifically the UNFCCC and how we would be able to include human rights.

Why did you choose the theme?

We chose this theme because a lot of people are familiar with these big environmental conventions like the Paris Agreement and the Kyoto Protocol, but are very unaware of the fact that human rights concepts are not included in the provisions of these conventions. Thus, we wanted to help create more awareness of this issue and show that change is possible by utilizing the mechanisms within these agreements.

What questions and comments did you receive at the Zemi Research Convention, and which made the most impact on your group?

One question that we received that stood out was, “How do we get large nations like Japan or the US to follow these concepts that these provisions within the UNFCCC provide in the aspect of human rights?” We thought this question was very thought provoking because one of the major issues of not just international environmental law but also all international law is how we get major states like the US or China to follow it. This concept is very thought-provoking because, in theory, international cooperation is in the benefit of everyone, but at times it is very difficult to actually achieve these goals. Thus, we believe as a group that presenting the problem as something that affects everyone and that is also urgent promotes to nations that cooperation and working with such provisions is necessary. Therefore, for the case of international environmental law, we have to show these states that people are being effected and furthermore, if we do not create change now, this can also happen to people in these nations like the US and China and not just the global south.

What kind of things did you experience as a group leading up to the convention?

We experienced cooperation and working together to develop our poster and the concepts that we wished to present about. Every person has their expertise, so we worked together to figure out how to utilize everyone in the group’s skills to properly develop our poster in the way our group as a whole wanted to.

Message to the next year's participants.

I hope not just our poster but other groups as well inspire you and your seminar to participate in next year’s convention and to try and inspire others in the topics that you and your seminar are interested in!

January 2025