A/HRC/31/52 Parties should, when taking action to address climate change, respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights, the right to health, the rights of indigenous peoples, local communities, migrants, children, persons with disabilities and people in vulnerable situations and the right to development, as well as gender equality, empowerment of women and intergenerational equity. 21. The influence of a human rights perspective can also be seen elsewhere in the Agreement. Most important, the growing recognition of the disastrous effects of climate change on human rights helped to support the decision of the parties to state, in article 2, that the Agreement “aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change ... including by holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change”. 22. In an important sense, the Paris Agreement signifies the recognition by the international community that climate change poses unacceptable threats to the full enjoyment of human rights and that actions to address climate change must comply with human rights obligations. This is a real achievement and, in this respect as in many others, the Paris Agreement is worth celebrating. In another sense, however, Paris is only the beginning. Now comes the difficult work of implementing and strengthening the commitments made there. In that effort, human rights norms will continue to be of fundamental importance. III. Effects of climate change on the enjoyment of human rights 23. Mary Robinson, who previously served as the President of Ireland and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and who is now the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General on Climate Change, has called climate change the greatest threat to human rights in the twenty-first century. The effects of climate change on human rights have been described in detail many times.11 In short, climate change threatens the full enjoyment of a wide range of rights, including the rights to life, health, water, food, housing, development and self-determination. The following brief description is by no means exhaustive. 24. As average global temperatures rise, deaths, injuries and displacement of persons from climate-related disasters such as tropical cyclones increase, as do mortality and illness from heat waves, drought, disease and malnutrition. In general, the greater the increase in average temperature, the greater the effects on the rights to life and health as well as other human rights. The foreseeable consequences of even a 2°C rise in average global temperature are dramatic. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, they include an increasing probability of “declining work productivity, morbidity (e.g., dehydration, heat stroke, and heat exhaustion), and mortality from exposure to heat waves. 11 This summary draws in particular on the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group II entitled Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (available from https://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/), as well as several of the statements and reports cited above: the OHCHR reports published in 2009 and 2015; the 2014 report of the then-Independent Expert summarizing statements of mandate holders and others; the report prepared for the Climate Vulnerable Forum in April 2015; the statement by 27 mandate holders on World Environment Day 2015; and the UNEP report published in 2015. 7