A/HRC/20/7 approach into the efforts made by the climate change community to combat climate change and its impacts. Human rights advocates should also consider studies on other factors relating to climate change and human rights, such as the impacts of population dynamics and urbanization. E. Session 4: Human rights and climate change: The way forward 46. This session focused on forging stronger cooperation between the human rights and climate change-awareness communities. The moderator was Mary Robinson, former High Commissioner for Human Rights, former President of Ireland and founder of the Mary Robinson Foundation Climate Justice. The rapporteur was Heba Mostafa, First Secretary of the Permanent Mission of Egypt. The panellists for this session included Sufiuer Rahman, Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bangladesh; Vicente Yu of the South Centre; Joshua Cooper of the University of Hawaii and Director of the Hawaii Institute for Human Rights; David Azoulay from the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL); and Yves Lador from Earthjustice. 47. The significant problem is a lack of cooperation, coordination, and coherence between the climate change-awareness and human rights communities. This lack of communication occurs at the domestic level, including in government agencies and civil society organizations that focus exclusively on their respective spheres of expertise, and at the international level between intergovernmental agencies. This lack of proper international cooperation has and will continue to create a protection gap until the efforts of the human rights and climate change communities are coordinated and successfully operationalized. 48. This issue, which received significant attention throughout the seminar, demands a global response on both the micro and macro scales. Generally speaking, a human rightsbased approach will help those involved in climate change negotiations to better identify and prioritize the areas demanding immediate attention. More specifically, this approach will assist States in recognizing if and where they are failing to fulfil their international and domestic obligations. Better recognition of these responsibilities is also essential to addressing the extraterritorial responsibilities of individual States for the effects and impacts of climate change. The possibility of eventually negotiating towards an international declaration was raised as a potential mechanism for mainstreaming climate change and human rights norms and obligations. 49. Some panellists described the close links between sustainable development and the issues of human rights and climate change. Historically, there has been a strong correlation between States’ level of development and level of greenhouse gas emissions. This continues to be the case because of inconsistent and contradictory policies at the domestic and international levels due to the international community’s attempts to separately address climate change and sustainable development. It is important that upcoming negotiations on sustainable development identify this historical linkage and reject the idea that economic growth must be related to emissions. In order to move away from this link, however, developed countries must provide climate financing and technology transfer to developing countries so that the developing economies do not have to sacrifice their development aspirations in their efforts to keep global emissions to a minimum. 50. One specific solution advocated by the panellists was using the capacity of existing organizations to promote coordination between the climate change and human rights communities. This can be accomplished by mainstreaming climate change and human rights considerations into the various United Nations mechanisms, such as the treaty bodies and the universal periodic review. 12