A/HRC/20/7 human rights and the environment was presented to the nineteenth session of Council in March 2012, further to the complementary resolution 16/11 on human rights and the environment. The President emphasized that the seminar can make progress towards enhancing cooperation between advocates in the human rights and climate change awareness fields prior to the upcoming United Nations World Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), as climate change is the result of unsustainable development that must urgently be addressed. 5. Subsequently, the High Commissioner delivered a keynote address. She explained that climate change is a social, economic and political issue with profound implications for social justice and gender equality, and its impacts have a range of implications for the effective enjoyment of human rights. Apart from the readily observable effect of exacerbating the scope and frequency of natural disasters, the High Commissioner stressed that more often the adverse effects of climate change will be cumulative and unspectacular and have a gradual effect on human rights. While the negative consequences will only gradually touch on the lifestyles and activities of the people in developed States which are most responsible, the least developed countries and small island States which have contributed least to global greenhouse gas emissions will be worst affected by global warming. 6. Bringing human rights into our future planning will enable us to better understand who is at risk from the effects of climate change and how they can be protected. For instance, the High Commissioner explained that men and women do not experience climate change equally. Because women constitute most of the world’s farmers, and produce more than half of the world’s food, their knowledge and capacity are crucial for successful climate change adaptation and mitigation policies. Similarly, migrants who are compelled to leave their homes as part of an adaptation strategy will remain in a precarious position throughout the cycle of their journey and will be vulnerable to human rights violations as they move across borders. The High Commissioner called on States to ensure that their migration policymaking is premised at all stages on fundamental human rights standards; she recognized the critical need for more research on the complex links between climate change and migration. Finally, the High Commissioner stressed that the effects of climate change will be most acutely felt by those segments of the population whose rights are already at risk due to other factors, such as poverty, age, minority status and disability. The most dramatic impacts of climate change are expected to occur in the world’s poorest countries where rights protections are too often weak. States are legally bound to address such vulnerability in accordance with the human rights principle of equality and nondiscrimination. 7. The High Commissioner concluded that the international development policy framework must necessarily be based on an understanding of climate change from a human rights perspective. A human rights-based approach allows us to appraise the most pressing needs of a highly inequitable global society, with greatly differing social, environmental, and economic levels of development. The High Commissioner mentioned that climate change debates, like those surrounding the seventeenth session of the Conference of Parties (COP17) in Durban, traditionally focused on the scientific environmental and economic aspects of the issue, with little attention given to human rights concerns. The High Commissioner therefore called on Member States preparing for Rio+20 to recognize that the future we want, as compared to the future we will otherwise get, depends largely on how well we address climate change. A human rights-based approach must be taken so that progress is not made at the cost of the most vulnerable and discriminated against members of society. 8. The Foreign Minister of Bangladesh, Dipu Moni, gave the next keynote address. She noted that existing climate negotiations have proceeded at a very slow pace, and 4