Human rights and sustainable development arguably share a close relationship. But, the exact nature of this relationship continues to be elusive. Scholars of sustainable development have often pointed out that climate change negotiators rarely bring up sustainable development concerns as core human rights issues. Others point out that it is often difficult to operationalize sustainable development obligations through the language of rights. What explains this intuitively close, but practically estranged relationship? In this essay, I argue that apart from political and strategic reasons, there are reasons rooted in how human rights are conceptualized that leads to the uneasy relationship between the two ideas. I draw attention to leading liberal theories of human rights and the normative status of sustainable development to argue that there is a weak case for at least speaking of a human right to sustainable development on such theories.