A/HRC/10/61 page 23 68. Concerns have also been raised about possible adverse effects of reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) programmes. These programmes provide compensation for retaining forest cover and could potentially benefit indigenous peoples who depend on those forest resources. However, indigenous communities fear expropriation of their lands and displacement and have concerns about the current framework for REDD. The Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues stated that new proposals for reduced emissions from deforestation “must address the need for global and national policy reforms … respecting rights to land, territories and resources, and the rights of self-determination and the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous peoples concerned”.102 III. RELEVANT HUMAN RIGHTS OBLIGATIONS 69. There exists broad agreement that climate change has generally negative effects on the realization of human rights. This section seeks to outline how the empirical reality and projections of the adverse effects of climate change on the effective enjoyment of human rights relate to obligations assumed by States under the international human rights treaties. 70. While climate change has obvious implications for the enjoyment of human rights, it is less obvious whether, and to what extent, such effects can be qualified as human rights violations in a strict legal sense.103 Qualifying the effects of climate change as human rights violations poses a series of difficulties. First, it is virtually impossible to disentangle the complex causal relationships linking historical greenhouse gas emissions of a particular country with a specific climate change-related effect, let alone with the range of direct and indirect implications for human rights. Second, global warming is often one of several contributing factors to climate change-related effects, such as hurricanes, environmental degradation and water stress. Accordingly, it is often impossible to establish the extent to which a concrete climate change-related event with implications for human rights is attributable to global warming. Third, adverse effects of global warming are often projections about future impacts, whereas human rights violations are normally established after the harm has occurred.104 102 E/C.19/2008/13, para. 45. 103 In recent years, several lawsuits related to greenhouse gas emissions and their contribution to climate change have been filed at national level against State authorities and private actors. However, the Inuit petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (see footnote 81 above) remains the only case to have invoked human rights law. For an overview of recent climate change-related lawsuits, see e.g. International Council for Human Rights Policy, Climate Change and Human Rights: A Rough Guide, 2008. 104 The Human Rights Committee has clarified that for a person to claim to be a victim of a violation of a right, “he or she must show either that an act or an omission of a State party has already adversely affected his or her enjoyment of such a right, or that such an effect is imminent …” Aalbersberg v. The Netherlands (No. 1440/2005). In several cases concerning environmental harms, the Committee has found that the author(s) did not meet these criteria for a victim of a human rights violation.