Remediation for loss and damage essential to ensure climate justice and realise the right to development: UN expert

NEW YORK – Climate justice requires developed countries and large corporations, especially fossil fuel corporations, to accept their historical responsibility to remediate adverse impacts of climate change-related loss and damage on the right to development and other human rights, said Surya Deva, the Special Rapporteur on the right to development.

In his report to the 79^th session of the UN General Assembly, Deva proposed a climate justice framework comprising four pillars (mitigation, adaptation, remediation and transformation) and 12 overarching human rights principles. This framework should guide climate actions of States, multilateral development banks, businesses and other actors.

“As climate change impacts all human rights, the time has come to develop international climate law in line with international human rights law. Affected individuals and communities should be able to seek effective remedies for past, current and future climate change-related loss and damage,” the expert said.

“A transformation is required in the current economic order, including the international financial architecture, business models and lifestyles, because they are merely promoting cumulative economic growth, creating inequalities both within and among countries and destroying the planet,” Deva said.

The Special Rapporteur recalled that the impact of climate change is not experienced by people and countries equally. Although only one tenth of the world’s greenhouse gases are emitted by the 74 lowest income countries, they will be the worst impacted by the effects of climate change.

“It is paradoxical that least developed countries and small island developing States that have contributed the least to climate change are the most exposed to its impacts,” Deva said. “Similarly, children, women, older persons, peasants, migrants, persons with a disability and Indigenous Peoples are impacted by climate in a different and disproportionate way.”

Although the decision to establish a Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage is an important step towards climate justice, it is critical for the World Bank, as an interim trustee of the Fund, and the Fund’s Board to integrate several human rights principles into all aspects concerning the Fund’s administration.

“The Fund should mobilise adequate additional resources, including by tapping into innovative sources of funding such as a wealth tax on super-rich and a carbon tax on fossil fuel companies. The Fund should be accessible to affected communities, be gender-transformative, adopt participatory decision-making processes and mostly offer grants not to worsen the debt burden of developing countries,” the expert said.