The UN rights chief has said the \u201ctriple planetary crises\u201d of climate change, pollution, and nature loss represented the biggest threat to human rights globally, at the opening yesterday of a month-long session set to prioritise environmental issues.
\n\u201cThe interlinked crises of pollution, climate change and biodiversity act as threat multipliers, amplifying conflicts, tensions and structural inequalities, and forcing people into increasingly vulnerable situations,\u201d Michelle Bachelet told the opening of the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
\n\u201cAs these environmental threats intensify, they will constitute the single greatest challenge to human rights of our era,\u201d she added.
\nThe former Chilean president said the threats were already \u201cdirectly and severely impacting a broad range of rights, including the rights to adequate food, water, education, housing, health, development, and even life itself\u201d.
\nShe said environmental damage usually hurt the poorest people and nations the most, as they often have the least capacity to respond.
\nBachelet referred to recent \u201cextreme and murderous\u201d climate events such as floods in Germany and California\u2019s wildfires.
\nShe also said drought was potentially forcing millions of people into misery, hunger and displacement.
\nBachelet said that addressing the environmental crisis was \u201ca humanitarian imperative, a human rights imperative, a peace-building imperative and a development imperative. It is also doable\u201d.
\nShe said spending to revive economies in the wake of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic could be focused on environmentally-friendly projects, but \u201cthis is a shift that unfortunately is not being consistently and robustly undertaken\u201d.
\nShe also said that countries had \u201cconsistently failed to fund and implement\u201d commitments made under the Paris climate accords.
\n\u201cWe must set the bar higher – indeed, our common future depends on it,\u201d she added.
\nHer remarks come at the opening session of the September 13 to October 8 session of the Human Rights Council, where climate change themes were expected to be central, alongside debates on alleged rights violations in Afghanistan, Myanmar, and Tigray, Ethiopia.
\nIn the same speech, she voiced alarm at attacks on indigenous people in Brazil by illegal miners in the Amazon.
\nGeneva-based diplomats told Reuters that two new resolutions on the environment were expected, including one that would create a new Special Rapporteur on Climate Change and another that would create a new right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
\nYesterday Germany\u2019s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas voiced support for the first idea, which has not yet been formally submitted in draft form.
\n\u201cClimate change affects virtually all human rights,\u201d he said.
\nMarc Limon of the Universal Rights Group think-tank said the Council\u2019s recognition of the right to a healthy environment would be \u201cgood news\u201d.
\n\u201cIt would empower individuals to protect the environment and fight climate change,\u201d he said.
\nDuring her address, Bachelet said that at the 12-day COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, set to begin on October 31, her office would push for more ambitious, rights-based commitments.
\nShe added that in many regions, environmental human rights defenders were threatened, harassed and killed, often with complete impunity.
\nShe said economic shifts triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic had apparently prompted increased exploitation of mineral resources, forests and land, with indigenous peoples particularly at risk.
\n\u201cIn Brazil, I am alarmed by recent attacks against members of the Yanomami and Munduruku peoples by illegal miners in the Amazon,\u201d she said.
\nIn her opening global update, Bachelet touched on the human rights situations in several countries, including Chad, the Central African Republic, Haiti, India, Mali and Tunisia.
\nOn China, she said no progress had been made in her years-long efforts to seek \u201cmeaningful access\u201d to Xinjiang.
\n\u201cIn the meantime, my office is finalising its assessment of the available information on allegations of serious human rights violations in that region, with a view to making it public,\u201d she said.
\nRights groups believe at least 1mn Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities have been incarcerated in camps in the northwestern region, where China is also accused of forcibly sterilising women and imposing forced labour.
\nBeijing has strongly denied the allegations and says training programmes, work schemes and better education have helped stamp out extremism in the region.
\nDecisions made by the Council\u2019s 47 members are not legally binding but carry political weight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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