COP27 and the centrality of human rights in climate action

by Amalia Ordóñez Vahí, Research Fellow, URG Blog, Blog, Climate change, Thematic human rights issues

‘We’re on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator’ warned UN Secretary General, António Guterres, at the opening of COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on 7 November 2022. Guterres presented a grim dichotomy: ‘humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish. It is either a Climate Solidarity Pact – or a Collective Suicide Pact.’ COP27 was the first …

Placing human rights at the core of climate action: towards a human rights-based approach to loss and damage

by Amalia Ordóñez Vahí, Research Fellow, URG Blog, Blog, Climate change, Thematic human rights issues

The summer of 2022 will be remembered by many as the time when the effects of climate change became for them all too real: water scarcity, droughts and desertification, loss of habitats and displacement due to wildfires , growing health conditions and deaths as a result of record-breaking heatwaves , displacement and destruction of housing and infrastructures due to record flooding . However, while these impacts are …

#The time is now – The case for universal recognition of the right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment

by Professor John H. Knox, former UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, Marc Limon, Executive Director of the Universal Rights Group and David R. Boyd - UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment Policy reports, Thematic human rights issues

#The time is now – The case for universal recognition of the right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment

This new policy report tells the story of international discussions on human rights and environment, human rights and climate change, and the push for the right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment (R2E), describing the broad normative contours of such a right, and explaining the benefits, for humanity, the environment and the climate, that would accrue from universal recognition. …