Climate change is recognised today as an irrefutable threat to human development. However, in the face of this threat, countries have yet to respond with the urgency required, often citing the tradeoff between economic prosperity and the safeguarding of human rights and environmental protection efforts. By examining the place that human rights occupy in international environmental treaties and the philosophical foundations of human rights, this paper first seeks to determine whether these two fields of law find themselves in opposition. This paper then provides interpretations for reconciling the interactions between human rights and international environmental law