A/HRC/32/23
community landownership.62 Conversely, it must be ensured that climate action does
not adversely affect human rights as, for example, might sometimes be the case in
relation to biofuels and food security or displacement and hydroelectric dams.
61.
States should enhance cooperation and development assistance on the basis of
principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibility to ensure adequate
funding of, and research into, adaptation measures that help the poorest countries and
those persons, groups and peoples most at risk. Specific measures could include:
equitable access to technology, including, if necessary, the lowering of intellectual
property standards and facilitation of technology transfer; targeted poverty reduction
efforts; and establishment of a special climate justice fund to finance climate
mitigation and adaptation policies with funds from both the public and private
sectors. Resources should be mobilized to enhance research and development relating
to, inter alia, data collection for the implementation of efficient and timely responses
to the negative impacts of climate change on determinants of health; diagnosis and
treatment of diseases and control of disease vectors; climate-resilient crops; renewable
sources of energy and energy conservation; and linkages between ecological health,
animal health and human health. Climate finance and adaptation should support
effective measures that bring health co-benefits particularly to persons in vulnerable
situations and in developing countries. Climate finance should be innovative, long
term and additional to existing funding for poverty reduction and sustainable
development.
62.
It is also critical that mechanisms to address loss and damages be strengthened
and that both the public and private sectors be accountable for their actions. National
human rights institutions, for example, can combine analysis and action to promote
remedies for individual violations of human rights and systematic deficiencies relating
to climate change. Courts and other legal institutions must also play a role in
protecting the most vulnerable, ensuring accountability and providing access to
remedy.
63.
Emergency responses need to be comprehensive and cover a broad range of
areas such as mental health, sexual and reproductive health, disability, loss and
damages. Immediate social protection measures, such as price subsidies, food
programmes, employment programmes, retraining programmes, loans for vulnerable
populations and special packages for children’s nutrition and for sexual and
reproductive health, should be included in emergency assistance. States should
establish, inter alia, early warning systems; utilize community-based monitoring,
including traditional knowledge; enhance emergency response capabilities; and
improve coordination in addressing climate migration and protecting migrants’ right
to health in disaster risk reduction and adaptation.
64.
Human rights policies, climate change policies and development policies, as well
as relevant experts, all need to support rights-based climate action. Instruments like
the Geneva Pledge for Human Rights in Climate Action can provide a vehicle for
furthering this objective. States that have not done so should consider signing the
Pledge. The human rights machinery should be mobilized to monitor climate
commitments, including through consideration of the human rights impacts of climate
change during the universal periodic review and by treaty bodies and Human Rights
Council special procedure mandate holders. OHCHR, the secretariat of the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and WHO should work together,
along with other relevant partners and States, to develop tools and promote climate
62
18
See, for example, Smith and others, “Human health”.
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