A/HRC/31/52 environmental issues have examined harm whose causes and effects are felt within one country. Climate change obviously does not fit within this pattern. 41. A possible response is to treat climate change as a matter of extraterritoriality — that is, to conclude that it implicates the obligation of each State to protect the human rights of those outside, as well as those within, its own jurisdiction. The Special Rapporteur is aware that the question of extraterritorial human rights obligations has been controversial in other contexts. However, he believes that attempting to describe the extraterritorial human rights obligations of every State in relation to climate change would be of limited usefulness even apart from its potential for controversy. In the human rights context, climate change is probably not best understood as a set of simultaneously occurring transboundary harms that should be addressed by each State trying to take into account its individual contribution to the effects of climate change in every other State in the world. The practical obstacles to such an undertaking are daunting, and it is instructive that the international community has not attempted to address climate change in this way. 42. Instead, from the creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988, through the adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992, to the negotiation of the Paris Agreement in 2015, States have consistently treated climate change as a global problem that requires a global response. This approach not only makes the most practical sense. It is also in accord with, and can be seen as an application of, the duty of international cooperation. 43. The duty of international cooperation has support in the general practice of States and, more specifically, in the Charter of the United Nations. Article 55 of the Charter requires the United Nations to promote “universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all,” and in Article 56, “all Members pledge themselves to take joint and separate action in co-operation with the Organization for the achievement of the purposes set forth in Article 55”. Similarly, article 2 (1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights requires each of its parties to take steps not only individually, but also “through international assistance and cooperation”, towards the progressive realization of the rights recognized in the Covenant. 44. With respect to many threats to human rights, international cooperation needs to play only a supporting role. Environmental harms whose causes and effects are within the jurisdiction of one State can and should be addressed primarily by that State. However, some challenges require international cooperation. Outside the environmental context, the International Court of Justice has recognized “the universal character both of the condemnation of genocide and of the co-operation required ‘in order to liberate mankind from such an odious scourge’.”26 Climate change is a paradigmatic example of a global threat that is impossible to address effectively without coordinated international action. As States have acknowledged in the text of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change itself, as well as in Human Rights Council resolutions 26/27 and 29/15, “the global nature of climate change calls for the widest possible cooperation by all countries and their participation in an effective and appropriate international response”.27 26 27 International Court of Justice, advisory opinion of 28 May 1951 on the reservations to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, p. 23 (quoting the preamble to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide). The obligation of States to work together to address climate change is also supported by the principle of international law that States must carry out their international obligations in good faith, so as not to undermine the ability of other States to meet their own obligations. See the judgment of the International Court of Justice on the case concerning the Gabčíkovo-Nagymaros project (Hungary/Slovakia), 1997, para. 142; and Mark E. Villiger, Commentary on the 1969 Vienna 11