Human Rights Council addresses climate change as a global threat

By Andreas Sandre von Warburg

The United Nations Human Rights Council has turned its attention to climate change and its impact on the human rights of the poorest communities in the world.

The Geneva-based Council has endorsed a new resolution titled “Human Rights and Climate Change,” turning its attention to the much debated issue of global warming. The resolution, adopted with unanimous consensus during the Seventh Session of the Council, within agenda item 3, “Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development,” requests the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, in consultation with Governments and other relevant partners, to conduct, a study of the relationship between climate change and human rights.

Earlier in February this year, Dr. Kyung-wha Kang, the U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that climate change threatens the human rights of millions of people who are at risk of losing access to housing, food and clean water unless governments intervene early to counter its effects.

“Global warming and extreme weather conditions may have calamitous consequences for the human rights of millions of people,” Dr. Kang said during a UN conference on climate change and migration. “Ultimately climate change may affect the very right to life of various individuals,” she said, pointing to threats of hunger, malnutrition, exposure to disease and lost livelihoods, particularly in poor rural areas dependent on fertile soil.

Kang, a South Korean, said countries had an obligation “to prevent and address some of the direst consequences that climate change may reap on human rights”.

Here is the text of the resolution passed by the Human Rights Council in its entirety.

“The Human Rights Council,

Concerned that climate change poses an immediate and far-reaching threat to people and communities around the world and has implications for the full enjoyment of human rights,

Recognizing that climate change is a global problem and that it requires a global solution,

Reaffirming the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action,

Noting the findings of the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, including, that the warming of the climate system is unequivocal and that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is likely to have been human-induced,

Recognizing that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change remains the comprehensive global framework to deal with climate-change issues, reaffirming the principles of the Framework Convention as contained in article 3 thereof, and welcoming the decisions of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, held in Bali, Indonesia, in December 2007, and in particular the adoption of the Bali Action Plan,

Recalling that the right to development was reaffirmed in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, as established in the Declaration on the Right to Development, as a universal and inalienable right and as an integral part of fundamental human rights,

Recognizing that human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development and that the right to development must be fulfilled so as to equitably meet the development and environmental needs of present and future generations,

Recognizing also that the world’s poor are especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change, in particular those concentrated in high-risk areas, and also tend to have more limited adaptation capacities,

Recognizing further that low-lying and other small island countries, countries with low-lying coastal, arid and semi-arid areas or areas liable to floods, drought and desertification, and developing countries with fragile mountainous ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change,

Recalling the relevant provisions of declarations, resolutions and programmes of action adopted by major United Nations conferences, summits and special sessions and their follow-up meetings, in particular Agenda 21 and the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, and the Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development and the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation,

Recalling also Commission on Human Rights resolution 2005/60 of 20 April 2005 on human rights and the environment as part of sustainable development,

Recalling further Human Rights Council resolution 6/27 of 14 December 2007 on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living and in particular paragraph 3 thereof, and Council decision 2/104 of 27 November 2006 on human rights and access to water,

Taking note of the contribution provided by special procedures of the Council in examining and advancing the understanding of the link between the enjoyment of human rights and the protection of environment,

Taking note also of the conclusions and recommendations contained in the report of the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health to the General Assembly2 which include a call for the Council to study the impact of climate change on human rights,

1. Decides to request the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, in consultation with and taking into account the views of States, other relevant international organizations and intergovernmental bodies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and other stakeholders, to conduct, within existing resources, a detailed analytical study of the relationship between climate change and human rights, to be submitted to the Council prior to its tenth session;

2. Encourages States to contribute to the study conducted by the Office of the High Commissioner;

3. Decides to consider the issue at its tenth session under agenda item 3, and thereafter to make available the study, together with a summary of the debate held during its tenth session, to the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change for its consideration.”