COP29: States must prioritise effective climate action and sufficient finance in accordance with human rights, say experts

GENEVA – As the 29^th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29) begins in Baku, Azerbaijan, UN experts called on States to prioritise the protection of human rights with truly ambitious climate action to 2030, and agree to sufficient, transparent and legitimate funding. They issued the following statement:

“Current and planned climate action until 2030 and beyond is grossly inadequate to ensure a safe climate for humanity, in line with everyone’s human right to a healthy environment and the protection of individuals, communities and States that have already borne the brunt of the negative human rights impacts of climate change. Collective current plans only amount to a 2 percent emissions reduction by 2030 compared to 2019, whereas a 43 percent cut is needed to avoid climate chaos.

Urgent action is required on phasing out fossil fuels and on co-developing environmentally holistic actions for mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage, to effectively address climate change together with toxic pollution, biodiversity loss, and food and water insecurity in the context of the just transition.

There is growing evidence of severe negative impacts of climate change and certain climate response measures on the human rights of frontline communities, particularly in small island developing States, with disproportionate impacts on women and girls, children, youth, older persons, persons with disabilities, persons with albinism, persons in poverty, Indigenous Peoples, peasant and rural workers, and internally displaced persons and migrants. These negative impacts can amount to a violation of human rights within and beyond a State’s boundaries: they are foreseeable and avoidable. They should therefore be prevented, and where this is no longer possible, remedied.

We, as UN human rights experts, thus urge States to consider carefully the growing evidence of the negative impacts on human rights of carbon markets, and the potentially irreversible negative impacts of proposed technology, notably geo-engineering, on human rights, biodiversity and the marine environment.

We also call on States to discharge their climate change-related obligations under the law of the sea, as clarified by the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea, which are essential for human rights protection. States must also prioritise human rights protection in the context of critical minerals life cycle, including through prior comprehensive independent assessments, based on best available science, of the need for and of alternatives to the extraction of critical minerals.

As the New Collective Quantified Goal for international climate finance is being negotiated, we recall developed States’ international obligation to provide sufficient financing to ensure the protection of human rights from the negative impacts of climate change through mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage. In these negotiations, there is a need to: mobilise sufficient funds to meet the needs of the countries most affected by climate change and least responsible for it; avoid exacerbating their debt burdens, which are not paused even during climate-related emergencies; ensure direct financial access, including for loss and damage, for Indigenous Peoples, peasants and rural workers, Afro-descendants, women and children, and people in poverty most affected by climate risks; prevent risks of climate finance being used to support projects that result in human rights violations; and apply the polluter pays principle to ensure international cooperation and fiscal legitimacy.

International obligations on children’ and women’s human rights, on the prohibition of racial and other forms of discrimination, and international human rights guidance on intersectionality should be integrated in all decisions, including, but not limited to, Action for Climate Empowerment and the gender action plan.

We reiterate previous calls to ensure civic space at Climate COPs, with both States and UN bodies, by: upholding the human rights of freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, including peaceful protest; guaranteeing access to meeting rooms for observers, and their effective participation in international decision-making; ensuring that environmental human rights defenders can operate free from threats, harassment, intimidation, surveillance, and violence; and safeguarding all COP spaces for children. States should also effectively prevent the undue influence of business interests during international negotiations.

Without diverse inputs, notably from global solidarity movements, climate decisions will lack effectiveness and the ability to address equity and complexity.”