A/HRC/32/24 disaster and environmental stress. Studies also linked the increased outbreak of diseases with climate change. 8. The Deputy High Commissioner argued that a world of unchecked climate change was a world where glaciers and tundra melted away, where millions went hungry and thousands died prematurely and where entire populations disappeared. To avert such a future, the international community, including the private sector, had to recognize that climate change was the result of human actions, assume responsibility and take appropriate measures to protect the most vulnerable. She called for ambitious, concerted action — in line with States’ human rights obligations to act individually and collectively to take the necessary steps in law, policy, institutions and public budgets — to protect human rights from climate-related harm and offer redress where they occur; protect and empower the vulnerable; allow the free, active and meaningful participation of civil society and affected communities; ensure non-discrimination and equity in climate policies; and ensure accountability for any breach of human right obligations. In closing, she emphasized the need for concrete, evidence-based action to protect the human right to health against the onslaught of climate change and promote truly inclusive and sustainable development for ourselves and our children. 9. The Director-General said that, for public health, climate was the defining issue of the twenty-first century. The impact of climate change was universal and unpredictable but human beings were unquestionably threatened by climate change, which affects the air people breathe, the water they drink, the food they eat and the chances that they will get infected by a disease. More than seven million deaths worldwide were caused by air pollution each year. Climate change also caused tens of thousands of deaths yearly from other causes, such as droughts, floods, wildfires and heat waves. According to the World Meteorological Organization, 2015 was the hottest year since records began in 1880. Furthermore, 2016 was predicted to be even hotter, threatening already perilous food supplies with droughts, especially in poorer countries, where subsistence farming relied on rain. The scale of this threat was immense as, in some countries, more than 70 per cent of the population depended on subsistence farming. 10. With regard to disease, she explained that outbreaks of cholera thrived under the conditions of a changing climate. Insects and other carriers of disease were very sensitive to heat, humidity and rainfall. Climate change had given dengue a vastly expanded geographical range and could do the same for malaria. By 2050, experts predicted that climate change would cause an additional 250,000 deaths each year, just from malaria, diarrhoea, heat stress and undernutrition. More than half of the world population lived in an area where aedes aegypti mosquitoes, the principal vector for zika, dengue and chikungunya, were present. The warming temperatures threatened to expand this geographical range even further, as mosquitoes loved warm weather. 11. For these reasons, the Director-General stated that the first global climate change agreement reached in Paris had been a treaty for public health as well as an environmental agreement. Human rights obligations, standards and principles had the power to shape policies for climate change mitigation and adaptation and provided an entry point for holding countries accountable for their climate commitments. They also served as an ethical reference point. The central focus of the panel on human rights and climate change, and specifically the right to health, is people, their health, their lives and their livelihoods, not money. 12. Holding countries accountable for their climate policies was also a matter of justice as the countries that have historically contributed the least to emissions were being hit the hardest. One of the biggest barriers that stood in the way of realizing the right to health was poverty and poverty was sexist, burdening women the most. The poorest households in the world were forced to rely on the most polluting energy sources for household activities 3