By NDUNG’U WAINAINA
The human-induced climate change is the largest and most pervasive threat to the natural environment. It is an existential threat to the existence of human beings. The poorest countries are paying the heaviest price.
Climate change is a violation of the earth and humanity’s future. The climate crisis is a human rights crisis. Human rights-based approach is the best compass to guide the important decisions and agreements to be made in finding solutions to climate change.
There is enormous injustice being perpetrated by rich countries and major corporations, which are not acting enough to reduce their greenhouse emissions. For instance, the G20 members account for 78 per cent of emissions over the last decade. Yet they are avoiding responsibility for this injustice.
Climate change impacts, directly and indirectly, a number of internationally guaranteed human rights. States have an affirmative obligation to take effective measures to prevent and redress these climate impacts. To mitigate climate change, and to ensure all human beings have the necessary capacity to adapt to the climate crisis, climate justice requires that climate action is consistent with existing human rights agreements, obligations, standards and principles.
Those who have contributed the least to climate change unjustly and disproportionately suffer its harms. They must be meaningful participants in and primary beneficiaries of climate action, and they must have access to effective remedies.
Human rights-based approach to addressing climate change, environmental degradation and biodiversity destruction is vital in bolstering climate financing, tackling mitigation and adaptation and agreeing on loss and damage. It enables a more effective response to the gender-differentiated impacts of climate change.
And free, meaningful and active participation for all is absolutely necessary if we are serious about transparent, inclusive and accountable climate decision-making. We need collective action together for real change to happen. Each sector of society needs to work together to advance the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Climate change poses a threat to internationally recognized human rights, including the right to life, food security, water, health and the right of people to live in their own country. This is a daily occurrence now in the Eastern, Horn and Sahel regions of Africa, with devastating effects, including resources-based conflicts, political instability and economic insecurity.
The Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi did build consensus and outlined agreements on clear time bound realistic deliverable climate and environmental actions. It is time to walk the talk. For Africa, it is not the moment for victimhood. It is time for collective decisive action. This is a matter of justice and equity. A just society takes action when people are suffering and holds all actors accountable for their decisions and actions.
Africa should come together, united behind a common purpose of human rights based approach to climate and environmental justice. There is tremendous strength in collective voice and actions to prevent the foreseeable adverse effects of climate change should be coherent with and be informed by the obligations to respect, protect and fulfill the human rights of all persons.
The Paris Agreement affirms that States should respect, promote and consider their respective human rights obligations when taking action to address climate change. It also underlines the imperatives of a just transition and the creation of decent work as critical dimensions in the response to climate change.
To foster policy coherence and help ensure climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts are adequate, sufficiently ambitious, non-discriminatory and otherwise compliant with human rights obligations, the following considerations should be reflected in all climate actions:
Adopt a binding ambitious action to avert, minimize and remedy the human rights harm caused by climate change.
A safe and stable climate is a fundamental prerequisite for the effective enjoyment of a wide range of human rights.
The impact of climate change is already disrupting the lives and livelihoods of people. Climate change violates human rights and the harms it causes disproportionately affect persons, groups and peoples already in vulnerable situations. Under these circumstances, ambitious climate action is a human rights obligation.
The Paris Agreement affirms that States should respect, promote and consider their respective human rights obligations when taking action to address climate change. It also underlines the imperatives of a just transition and the creation of decent work as critical dimensions in the response to climate change.
Ensure an inclusive Stocktake with human rights at its core.
Public participation and access to information in environmental matters are human rights, the realization of which is critical for effective climate action. These rights and the principles of transparency and accountability should inform and guide an effective Global Stocktake.
The Stocktake will have substantial implications for future climate action and the rights of current and future generations. The Stocktake must not lose sight of the ultimate objectives of climate action – protecting the planet, and human health and wellbeing.
A commitment to safe, inclusive, evidence-based climate action now and in the future.
All people have the human rights to participation, access to information, education, and freedom of expression. Climate action must uphold and affirm these rights for all. The Call to Action emphasizes the need for the engagement of actors at all levels in support of the right to a healthy environment, as well as protection mechanisms for environmental and human rights defenders.
Article 12 of the Paris Agreement calls for Parties to “cooperate in taking measures, as appropriate, to enhance climate change education, training, public awareness, public participation and public access to information.” This guarantees access and inclusion in climate change debate. This is getting people who are most affected by climate change to be able to present their voices to climate change meetings. This is women, children, youth, people with disabilities, indigenous peoples, all the groups that are right at the forefront of climate change and human rights impacts. We need to find ways of getting their voice into the climate change process.
Sufficient, equitable and accountable commitments, centered in human rights, for resource mobilization to support mitigation and adaptation, and address loss and damage.
Under human rights law, States have an obligation to effectively mobilize the maximum available resources for the progressive realization of human rights. This requires the effective mobilization of resources to prevent the human rights harms caused by climate change.
In addition to requiring mobilization of resources, a human rights-based approach to climate finance guards against the risk of climate finance being used to support projects that result in human rights violations, exacerbate social and economic inequalities and/or deepen inequity.
Under the Paris Agreement, the principles of equity, and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capacities should guide the mobilization of resources for climate action. Parties to the Paris Agreement committed to align finance flows with ‘a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development’.
Climate financing, including the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on international climate finance post-2025, should be certain, predictable and grant-based. It should cover mitigation, adaptation- which continues to make up only a small proportion of climate finance despite evidence of its value and loss and damage.
Financing should be adequate to bridge the gap between the current financial resources available to tackle the climate crisis and what is needed to avert, minimize and redress its human rights impacts. It should also contribute to a just transition and to leaving no one behind by supporting investment in decent livelihoods.
Enforce a human rights-based approach to carbon markets and international cooperation under Article 6.
Projects are better designed and more sustainable when affected people are consulted in a fair way, and safeguards accountability mechanisms, including monitoring and evaluation, are in place. At COP26, Parties affirmed that their human rights obligations apply in the context of cooperative approaches to climate action. They committed to an inclusive and participatory approach to climate action under Article 6 and to the establishment of a redress mechanism under Article 6.4. These commitments need to be operationalized. Technologies with uncertain and/or demonstrated risks to human rights and the environment should not be admitted.
Going to the COP28 Summit in the United Arab Emirates, critical actionable realistic decisions have to be made.
There has to be a different development model and financing systems. There is disconnection between the pledges and commitments on one hand and the reality check on the other. Discussions had consensus of critically aligning financial flows with low-emission, and resilient development pathways.
Crucial sectors such as energy, transport, construction and water infrastructure make up more than 60% of greenhouse gas emissions. Yet infrastructure has suffered from chronic underinvestment. An unprecedented transformation of existing infrastructure systems is needed to make it climate resilient.
The investment gap and the urgency of the climate challenge is a unique opportunity to develop public and private systems that deliver better services while protecting the environment and increasing resilience. Harnessing the benefits of rapidly emerging technologies, new business models and financial innovations will be key in opening new pathways to low-emission, and climate resilient futures.
Financing climate change challenges and new development models is central to building a climate resilient planet. Mobilizing public and private resources across the wider financial ecosystem is an essential part of generating sufficient funding needed for sustainable infrastructure.
Public finance institutions, banks, institutional investors, corporations and capital markets all have a crucial role to play, both in their own right and as part of the broader financial ecosystem. Governments need to set the right incentives to mobilize finance away from emissions-intensive projects, and provide investment incentives and climate policy frameworks that support the rapid and radical transformations required.
While there has been some progress, current policies continue to foster an incremental approach to climate change. Existing policy frameworks, government funding and economic interests continue to be entangled in fossil fuels and emissions-intensive activities. Deeper efforts (concrete actions not mere talk) are needed to drive systemic change, overcome institutional inertia and break away from the vested interests that are barriers to low-emission and resilient development.
Enhanced international co-operation is an essential part of the transformation. There is also growing awareness that the push for greater climate action must be accompanied by a just and inclusive transition to address inequalities and provide equal opportunities for all parts of society. Governments need to ensure that the transition benefits everyone and does not disproportionately affect the poor and most vulnerable. Young people are key players in climate change actions and investments.
The Africa Climate Summit laid a firm policy and actions agenda going to the COP28 to enable societies around the world to undertake the kind of systemic actions that the transformation towards a low-emission, resilient future will require.
It highlights transformative areas and 20 actions that are key to aligning financial flows with climate and development goals in the areas of planning, innovation, public budgeting, financial systems, development finance and cities.
The writer is a Transitional Justice and Human Security Fellow and Works at Africa Council on Human Security @NdunguWainaina
