A/HRC/20/7 must commit to reducing climate change and its impacts on human rights while recognizing that other countries will undermine the effectiveness of all the commitments. To facilitate these meaningful commitments, the panellists noted that the international community must identify effective practices for adaptation and mitigation that simultaneously promote and protect human rights. 34. Another method raised for building capacity is the establishment of a special procedure. Tasks for such a mandate could include developing a legal instrument, identifying effective practices or coordinating with the other special-procedures mandate holders to integrate climate change issues into their respective mandates. It was also suggested that the Human Rights Council could ask existing mandate holders to integrate climate change where relevant. 35. Climate finance can be improved through structural changes to the existing architecture. Climate finance must address human rights issues directly, but this language is noticeably absent in the present architecture. Climate finance must be adequate, predictable and equitable, and it must be democratically governed so that countries participate on an equal basis. Further, climate finance should be structured so that developing countries are able to provide input as to how they receive financial support. 36. The importance of immediate technology transfer was discussed. It is not sufficient that developed countries generate mitigation and adaptation methodologies if these are not passed along to developing countries and small island States. Failure to transfer technologies increases the likelihood that these States will eventually become the next wave of environmental degraders and risks leaving these States without the technological capacity for successful adaptation. D. Session 3: Forging stronger cooperation between the human rights and climate change communities 37. Session 3 focused on forcing stronger cooperation between the human rights community and the climate change-awareness community. The moderator of Session 3 was Evan P. Garcia, permanent representative of the Philippines, and the rapporteur was Omar Rabi, first secretary of the Permanent Mission of Morocco. The panellists for this session included Iruthisham Adam, permanent representative of the Maldives; Alanna Armitage, UNFPA Director of the Geneva office; Elena Villalobos Prats, World Health Organization (WHO); Daniel Taillant, Center for Human Rights and Environment (CEDHA); Alyssa Johl, Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), in her capacity as Coordinator of the Human Rights and Climate Change Working Group; John Knox, professor at Wake Forest University School of Law; and Jasper Teulings, general counsel for Greenpeace International. 38. The panellists endorsed the view of the previous sessions that there is a natural link between human rights and climate change, and concluded that one of the main challenges is the lack of coordination and synergy between these two areas. The unique relationship between every relevant stakeholder and the impacts of climate change on human rights should be understood, whether a member of the developing countries and small island States that are experiencing these effects disproportionately or a member of the developed countries that are contributing to these effects and feeling the impacts more gradually. This challenge requires the human rights community to foster a dialogue with members of the climate change-awareness community and to raise awareness of the human rights impacts of climate change. Only then can the climate change community demonstrate the value that the human rights-based approach will bring to the issue and bridge the existing gaps between the two communities. 10

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