A/HRC/7/16 page 24 people and communities into distressed housing and living conditions. Climate change has already affected millions of the world’s poorest people and could result in hundreds of millions of people suffering loss of livelihood and permanent displacement.56 86. International human rights law imposes several obligations on States that are relevant to addressing human vulnerabilities to climate change, including the obligation to improve access to housing located away from hazardous zones and to safe drinking water.57 5. Global challenges 87. Throughout his mandate, the Special Rapporteur has continued to elaborate on linkages between the process of economic globalization and the realization of the right to adequate housing and other relevant rights, and sought to elaborate a research agenda on this topic. With already deteriorating living conditions for the majority of poor communities in cities and rural areas, local authorities and civil society organizations around the world are seeking to provide alternative approaches to development and planning, to protect their most vulnerable citizens from the negative impacts of economic globalization, including privatization processes. Innovative approaches to improving the housing and living conditions of the poor are found in cities implementing participatory budgeting or decentralization of administration and decision-making through democratic processes.58 While concerns have been raised in the international community that globalization has exacerbated the current deepening inequality between and within nations, its direct impact on the right to adequate housing - broadly defined to include access to land, as well as other essential services such as water, electricity and sanitation - have yet to be systematically studied or estimated.59 88. In today’s context of globalization and predominance of the free market economy, there is a trend towards greater competition and market efficiency which often results in increased marginalization of the poor. The Special Rapporteur has examined in a previous report60 examples of privatization of water services that negatively affected the poor, concluding that unfettered globalization cannot bring about the fulfilment of economic, social and cultural rights. 56 See, inter alia, United Nations Development Programme Human Development Report 2007/2008; and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report, Working Group II Report, “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability”, and Synthesis Report. 57 “Climate Change and Human Rights”, address by the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights at the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol, available at http://www.unhchr.ch/huricane/huricane.nsf/NewsRoom?OpenFrameSet. 58 See E/CN.4/2003/5. 59 See E/CN.4/2002/59. 60 E/CN.4/2003/5.