A/HRC/41/39 Special Procedures should ensure a systemic response to climate change that considers the full range of options for coming up with a more creative, urgent and system-wide approach, led by the Special Rapporteur on the environment. Regional human rights bodies 26. At the regional level, the European Court of Human Rights has not directly addressed climate change. 47 In contrast, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has characterized the human right to a healthy environment as fundamental for the existence of humankind and having both individual and collective dimensions, including obligations owed to both present and future generations. It concluded that the rights to life and personal integrity, on their own, require States “to prevent significant environmental damages within and outside their territory” and that this, in turn, requires them to “regulate, supervise and monitor the activities under their jurisdiction that could cause significant damage to the environment; carry out environmental impact assessments … prepare contingency plans … and mitigate any significant environmental damage …”.48 Civil society 27. A diverse array of civil society groups and human rights defenders are working on climate change issues. However, among international human rights groups there has been rather minimal engagement to date and limited collaboration between human rights and environmental groups remains a missed opportunity. A detailed survey is beyond the scope of the present report, but the track records of major organizations are instructive. 28. Since 2009, Amnesty International has called for a global agreement to curb climate change and joined the Global Call for Climate Action. 49 Publicly available records indicate that in 2015, the senior leadership team “decided that although climate change was not … a priority in Amnesty’s strategic goals for 2016–2019, Amnesty would need to engage more deeply on the issue in the medium and long term”.50 By June 2017, a draft climate change policy had been prepared, but has yet to be adopted. In 2018, Amnesty called upon Governments to “commit to much more ambitious emissions reduction targets … or bear responsibility for loss of life and other human rights violations and abuses on an unprecedented scale”. 51 More recent media reports indicate that Amnesty International plans to make climate change a key priority and to increase its advocacy on the subject. 52 29. Human Rights Watch has worked on climate change within its broader programme on the environment. While it has taken careful note in a number of reports of issues related to climate change, such as illegal logging, the right to food, child marriage and the Zika virus, and in one report directly documented the challenges of climate change, 53 little attention has been paid to the overall impact of climate change on human rights or to the obligations of Governments to undertake mitigation. As a result, the voice of a key actor in international debates has been largely absent. 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 See Heta Heiskanen, “Climate change and the European Court of Human Rights: future potentials”, The Routledge Handbook of Human Rights and Climate Governance (London and New York, Routledge, 2018). Inter-American Court of Human Rights, advisory opinion OC-23/17, 15 November 2017. See Amnesty International, “Climate change”, available at www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/climatechange/. Amnesty International 33rd International Council meeting, “Circular 10: human rights aspects of climate change”. Amnesty International, “Failure to act swiftly on climate change risks human rights violation on massive scale”, 8 October 2018. See Sean O’Neill, “Amnesty International expands remit to include climate change”, The Times, 30 April 2019. Human Rights Watch, “There is no time left. Climate change, environmental threats, and human rights in Turkana County, Kenya” (2015). 7