Human Rights and Climate Action – A COP25 Side Event
Climate change cannot be separated from human rights. The impacts of climate change adversely and disproportionately affect people who are already most marginalized: women, youth, indigenous communities, rural land users, people living with disabilities, migrants, and those displaced by climate change and related conflict.
But when human rights are realized, people are better equipped to lead and support efforts to address the climate crisis. Just and effective climate action requires stronger attention to human rights.
How can human rights be better protected and realized in the global fight against climate change? What are the key issues from the perspectives of groups most adversely affected, and from experts and practitioners seeking to ensure that human rights are understood and realized in climate action?
Media Advisory: Human Rights and Climate ActionTheir Land, Our Future: To Arrest the Climate Crisis, We Need a Democratic Overhaul
Originally Published on Mongabay
Both the climate crisis and inequality require a democratic overhaul. And governments globally should start by turning over legal control of land and natural resources to local communities and indigenous land users. Their rights are key to survival for all of us.
Those of us with greater power and privilege must begin by calling for action on what is both just and effective: land rights that favor people and planet over profit and power.
Infographics: Secure Land Rights and Climate Change
Further Reading
Gender Equal Land Rights Policies
- Towards a Gender-Responsive Implementation of the UNCCD (published by UN Women 2018)
- Moving Towards a Twin Agenda: Gender equality and land degradation neutrality (published by Environmental Science & Policy 2018)
- Women’s Land Rights in Customary Settings Key to Mitigation & Adaptation (w/RRI, published by Women Deliver 2017)
- Women Gaining Ground (endorsed by CGIAR, GI-ESCR, ILC, IWMI, and Namati 2017)
Adaptive Capacity & Climate Resilience
- The Hungry Caravan (Foreign Policy 2018)
- Food Security and Climate Resiliency Require Land Rights Reform (Skoll Foundation 2018)
- Combatting land degradation must begin and end with local communities (w/The Nature Conservancy, published by Thomson Reuters Foundation’s Place 2018)
- Land Rights Key to Adaptation Strategies for Smallholder Farmers (Devex 2018)