A/HRC/31/52 study has found that if global temperatures increase by more than 2 to 3°C, 20 to 30 per cent of the assessed plant and animal species are likely to be at a high risk of extinction. 20 The decimation of other species will harm the human species too. With respect to the right to health, for example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that the loss of biological diversity “can lead to an increase in the transmission of infectious diseases such as Lyme, schistosomiasis, and hantavirus in humans”.21 31. The adoption of the Paris Agreement in December 2015 gives reason to believe that the international community has opened a new chapter in its fight against climate change. But other events continue to remind us that we are running out of time to avoid its worst effects. During the same month that the world celebrated the conclusion of the new climate agreement, every region experienced the characteristics of a warming planet, amplified in many cases by the El Niño effect. 32. In what has become a tragic annual event, a deadly typhoon struck the Philippines. Record floods inundated Chennai in India, as well as towns across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and along the Mississippi River in the United States of America. Parts of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay experienced their worst flooding in 50 years, forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of people. Other areas suffered from too little water. UNICEF warned that 11 million children in eastern and southern Africa were at risk of hunger, disease and lack of water because of drought conditions. Lake Poopó, the second-largest lake in the Plurinational State of Bolivia, was reported to have dried up as a result of changing weather patterns. As 2016 began, scientists reported that 2015 was the hottest year in modern history, about 1°C warmer than the preindustrial average. IV. Human rights obligations relating to climate change A. General considerations 33. As the Special Rapporteur has previously explained, States have obligations to protect the enjoyment of human rights from environmental harm (A/HRC/25/53). These obligations encompass climate change. The foreseeable adverse effects of climate change on the enjoyment of human rights give rise to duties of States to take actions to protect against those effects. Human rights obligations apply not only to decisions about how much climate protection to pursue, but also to the mitigation and adaptation measures through which the protection is achieved. 34. In some respects, the application of these obligations is relatively straightforward. However, the scale of climate change introduces complicating factors. Unlike most environmental harms to human rights that have been considered by human rights bodies, climate change is truly a global challenge. Greenhouse gases emitted anywhere contribute to global warming everywhere. Billions of people contribute to climate change and will experience its effects, and the causal chains linking individual contributions with specific effects may be impossible to discern with certainty. 35. These complications led OHCHR to warn in 2009 that “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”. Specifically, OHCHR stated that it would be “virtually impossible to disentangle the 20 21 Ibid., p. 1,053. Ibid., p. 1,054. 9