In the months leading up to the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on Human Rights, Fracking and Climate Change, Spring Creek Project presents the Bedrock Lectures on Human Rights and Climate Change.

This online series features leading scientists, attorneys, writers, community leaders, activists, and artists. Together, the lectures create a chorus of voices and ideas that will invite audiences to imagine how we can build communities and lives in a world where environmental crises quickly become human rights crises.

John Knox, Special Rappateur on Human Rights and the Environment, United Nations Office of the High Commissioner, will share his lecture, "The Human Right to a Healthy Environment," on May 23, 2018. 

John H. Knox is the Henry C. Lauerman Professor of International Law at Wake Forest University, in North Carolina. In 2012, the United Nations Human Rights Council appointed him to be the first United Nations Independent Expert on human rights and the environment, and in 2015, it renewed his mandate for three years and changed his title to Special Rapporteur. In the course of his work for the United Nations, he has conducted consultations around the world and published reports on the relationship between human rights and environmental protection. Information about the mandate is available at the website of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, www.ohchr.org, and at his personal website, www.srenvironment.org.

We will release a new Bedrock Lecture every Wednesday from January 31 to May 30, 2018. The lectures are free and publically available on our website and social media channels. We also encourage you to come to the in-person screening of the lectures at noon each Wednesday in Bexell Hall 412. Each lecture will be about 20 minutes, and we invite you to watch them from your desk, with a group of friends, or at a community gathering.