Climate protection as a human right

Dear colleagues, dear friends,

Thirty years ago, diplomats, representatives of civil society and UN leaders came together, in this city, to develop a stronger, more operational global system to deliver human rights.

They built on the foundation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – a resonant and transformational text that for the first time, recognised the equality and rights of every human being, without distinction.

The right to live free from any form of discrimination, arbitrary detention and torture.   The rights to education and to adequate food, healthcare, life-long social protections, and housing.   Freedom of expression, opinion, and the right to privacy. Freedom of association and peaceful assembly. Freedom of religion and belief.  

The right to fair and just conditions of work. To fair trial and to equal protection of the law. To participate, freely and meaningfully, in public affairs.

The Universal Declaration was a map. Distilled from the experience of decades of warfare, horrific genocide, profound economic recession and the oppression of imperialism, it pointed to the measures that could walk countries out of those disasters and towards shared prosperity, justice, and peace.

In 1993, States met at the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights, to progress this fundamental transformation.

They called for the advancement of human rights to become a priority objective of the UN system.  And they called for a special Office to be set up: the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The Vienna Declaration also included language that addressed the clear links between the environment and our effective enjoyment of human rights.

It called for the right to development to be fulfilled, “so as to meet equitably the developmental and environmental needs of present and future generations.” And it recognized that “illicit dumping of toxic and dangerous substances and waste potentially constitutes a serious threat to the human rights to life and health of everyone.”

Today, the catastrophic impacts of climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss are creating suffering and chaos in every region. No country is spared.

States and businesses have not taken adequate action to stop climate change, to prevent pollution and to protect nature.

The human rights impacts are already massive – and they will grow worse.

Tens of millions of people are displaced each year by climate- and weather-related disasters.

Roughly half of the people alive today experience severe lack of water for at least part of the year.

Climate change has greatly reduced food security.

Heat-related deaths are growing, and pollution is responsible for 1 in every 6 deaths each year.

Rising temperatures and ambient toxicity also increase the risk of species extinction and ecosystem collapse. This decline in the variety and number of living things that inhabit our world threatens the  complex and delicate web of life on which we all rely for our existence.

The triple planetary crisis will hit worst at the people who are already trapped in vulnerable situations.

But nobody will be spared. We do not have a Planet B.

This is a human rights crisis.

It is the result of actions and decisions -- particularly by governments and corporations -- that prioritize short-term profits over the sustainability of our planet and the well-being of its people.

The scale and scope of its impact on the rights of so many people makes it very clear that human rights need to be the central focus of all environmental decision-making.

Recent landmark resolutions that recognize  our universal right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment -- by both the UN Human Rights Council and the General Assembly  reflect this determination.

Everyone, everywhere has a right to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and eat healthy food, amid a safe and stable climate, a non-toxic environment, and healthy biodiversity and ecosystems. Everyone, everywhere has a right to participate in environment-related decisions, with full access to information and to justice.

To realize this right requires action by all States – cooperative and equitable international action.

And it requires a fundamental shift in our values, priorities, and behaviours, towards a more sustainable and just future.

Recognition of the right to a healthy environment by the UN General Assembly and the Human Rights Council is an essential step forward. The progress that was made last year at the 27^th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change drew from it  for the first time. States adopted decisions on loss and damage, adaptation, action for climate empowerment, capacity-building and other issues that integrated human rights. And the more such decisions reflect and integrate human rights, the more powerful, and more fair, they become.

Growing recognition of the need for action that addresses the links between human rights, climate change and sustainable development offers us hope.

Hope, that it is not too late to reimagine our relationship with nature.

Hope that people united in the environmental justice movement can drive life-saving change.

Hope – and demands -- that States and business will at last take action that is commensurate with the threats we face.

Many years ago, as a young person here in Austria, I aspired to be part of that change. Environmental activism has been part of my upbringing and DNA.

Today, as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and I am  still just as committed to environmental rights.

We need action to go further. Deeper. Faster.

We must empower people to hold their governments, big polluters and others accountable. I welcome increasing efforts to do so, including through criminal as well as civil law. Legal frameworks for accountability and action must be strengthened by placing human rights at their core.

My Office will continue to engage in global climate negotiations. We will advocate for higher ambition, including steeper downward emission reduction trajectories, stops to public fossil fuel subsidies and investments, and an effective, funded loss and damage framework that gives people access to remedy for harm caused to them by climate change. We will continue to call for an evidence-based Global Stocktake that can inform the concrete, realistic and human rights-based action we need.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found that policy approaches that are grounded in human rights lead to more sustainable, more effective outcomes. It found that climate litigation and mass movements are particularly important in catalysing action.

In other words, while people’s participation, access to information and access to justice are legal obligations, they are also key to putting an effective stop to climate change.

I welcome the increase in climate litigation cases by people and communities around the world, in national courts as well as international tribunals.

Earlier this year, to cite just one example, a dozen children filed suit in the Austrian Constitutional Court alleging that Austria’s climate laws failed to adequately protect their rights and those of future generations. Their claim mirrors action being taken by children all around the world to demand higher climate ambition from States.

Last year, the Austrian Government itself took legal action to challenge the inclusion of natural gas and nuclear power in the new EU “sustainable investment taxonomy,” a list of purportedly environmentally sustainable activities.

The European Court of Human Rights recently held hearings in its Grand Chamber – assigned to the most important cases coming to the Court – on two cases in which applicants sued the Governments of France and Switzerland, respectively, for inadequate action to protect their human rights from climate change. Other climate cases are also advancing in this Court.  

Claims before international, regional, and domestic courts, as well as the UN human rights Treaty Bodies, raise awareness and spark more ambitious action to avert and remedy climate harms.

 In March, the UN General Assembly formally requested  the UN’s highest judicial organ – the International Court of Justice –- to provide guidance and clarity to States on their legal obligations with respect to climate change, including for future generations.

The General Assembly resolution that requested the ICJ’s advisory opinion was advanced by Vanuatu and a coalition of States from all regions. It built on support from committed, determined civil society activists.

At the Council of Europe, work is ongoing regarding a possible new legally binding agreement on the right to a healthy environment.

My Office is also assisting discussions at the Association of South-East Asian Nations regarding a potential new regional framework for environmental rights.

And we are working with partners to secure further ratification and more effective implementation of existing treaties, such as the Aarhus Convention in Europe and the Escazu Agreement in Latin America and the Caribbean.

To protect the environment, we need to end impunity for attacks against environmental human rights defenders. We need to encourage, not beat back, the vital work of climate activists. But in many countries we’re seeing defenders of the environment and land rights facing threats, violence – even murder – without adequate action to track down and hold those responsible to account. In other countries, climate protests face increasing repression. And strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) are being used as a method to silence environmental defenders worldwide.

For effective climate action, we need to magnify the voices of defenders and activists by empowering and protecting them.

We need to stop the massive financing and subsidization of environmentally destructive industries and get serious about investing in sustainable development.

We need to put a stop to climate denialism, greenwashing and the empty pretence by corporate lobbies that unspecified technical advances will painlessly manage environmental damage at some point, as if by magic.

Litigation around the world, and actions such as the powerful Carbon Majors Inquiry in the Philippines, have revealed the extensive actions taken by some businesses to delay climate action and deny climate science.

We need to ensure that decision-making is evidence-based and accountable. Work by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, among others, has repeatedly emphasized the importance of a human rights-based approach to climate action, including by protecting the rights of future generations, with accountability for the Governments and businesses most responsible.

The triple planetary crisis challenges every part of society. Its impacts are profoundly unjust, and they are growing. International law, and national law, must be driving factors in the solutions we find to address these issues. Because if our responses are not grounded in our values and the rule of law, we will lose a great part of our heritage of human rights.

The UN system is neither perfect nor all-powerful, but it is grounded in the legitimacy of universality. It brings a unique convening power to this global crisis, with the capacity to catalyse action by States, by business, by civil society, and by individuals – in short, by us all.

Thank you

This speech was originally delivered in German - (Klimaschutz als Menschenrecht)