Climate Pollutants Threaten Human Rights
By Dr Arvind Kumar
Recently, the Center for Human Rights and Environment (CEDHA) in Argentina and the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development (IGSD) in Washington, D.C., have in a joint petition to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights submitted that climate pollutant emissions violate human rights and require rapid reductions to protect the world’s most vulnerable people. According to the Joint submission, climate pollutants and associated adverse impacts from a warming world violate basic human rights to life, health, water, food, equality before the law, effective judicial remedy, residence and movement, self determination, clean environment, and to be free from interference with one’s home. States have a mandatory obligation under international human rights law to adopt special measures to protect the fundamental rights of the inhabitants of the world’s most vulnerable regions from climate impacts.
Romina Picolotti, President of CEDHA, has stated: “The Human Rights Council is the highest organ of the U.N. Human Rights System, and has an affirmative duty to ensure the international protection of the basic rights of human beings. We are operating under circumstances of extreme emergency with climate change and the failure to act immediately will imply, not only massive human rights violations, but also will rob the U.N. Human Rights System of its purpose and raison d’être.” Black carbon soot, ground-level (troposphere) ozone, methane, and hydro-fluorocarbons (HFCs), collectively known as short-lived climate pollutants, remain in the atmosphere for days to a few decades, and are responsible for up to half of global climate change and the associated adverse impacts. In addition to cutting the short lived climate pollutants, it is critical to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, which is responsible for the other 50% of global warming. Cutting carbon dioxide is essential for long-term climate protection.
