Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Announces Rights On Climate Action Human Rights Climate Commitments
This past weekend, experts and activists from around the world shared knowledge and stories about the devastating impacts of climate change on fundamental human rights, the obligations governments, corporations and individuals have to address the crisis, and solutions needed for a sustainable future.
After three days of dynamic and thought-provoking panels and keynotes at the inaugural Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Summit co-hosted by United Nations Human Rights and CU Boulder, the work now begins on moving the talk about the human rights crisis that climate change is to action.
At the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 27) at Sharm El-Sheikh Egypt, the Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Alliance announced the launch of a groundbreaking initiative for rights-based climate action, the Human Rights Climate Commitments.
Inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other human rights instruments, the first draft of the commitments will be an outcome of the just-concluded summit at CU Boulder for which 4,300 people representing 99 countries registered to attend in-person and virtually. Organizers are aiming to provide an update on the commitments in April and unveil them at COP28 in Dubai.
CU Distinguished Professor S. James Anaya, an expert in international human rights, summit steering committee chair and the former UN special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples, said he came away from the global summit “energized.”
“That is the sentiment I feel, and it is pretty prevalent among those who were panelists and keynote speakers and many in the audience: a renewed sense of resolve, as well as hope.”
Anaya said the post-summit commitments will play a key role as an aspirational and prescriptive living document, including specific commitments that governments, corporations and educational institutions will be urged to make to prevent and minimize the harmful effects of climate change. The commitments will be periodically reviewed and updated to reflect the highest human rights standards and latest science.
In her closing remarks, Human Rights Officer Therese Arnesen, of the UN Human Rights Office, said: “We need to unite. We need to stand together to continue promoting human rights-based climate action. That’s what this summit is about. This is what the Human Rights Climate Commitments coming out of the summit is about, and I hope you will take with you some of the inspiration, despair and anger and excitement that I, at least, felt during the last three days.”
In multiple sessions, panelists pointed out that it has been women, Indigenous people and activists from developing countries or the Global South who have pushed forth some of the most critical advancements in fighting climate change. That includes the Paris Agreement goal to limit global warming to, preferably 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, and the recent establishment at COP 27 of a “loss and damage” fund for nations most vulnerable to the climate crisis.