UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell has passionately appealed for urgent global cooperation on climate change. in his address at the official opening of COP29, he called on States to prioritize the protection of human rights with truly ambitious climate action to 2030 and agree to sufficient, transparent, and legitimate funding.
The 29th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29) is held in Baku, Azerbaijan.
They also urged States to consider carefully the growing evidence of the negative impacts on human rights of carbon markets, and the potentially irreversible negative impacts of proposed technology, notably geo-engineering, on human rights, biodiversity, and the marine environment.
States must also discharge their climate change-related obligations under the law of the sea, as clarified by the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea, which are essential for human rights protection as well as prioritize human rights protection in the context of critical minerals life cycle.
Urgent action is required on phasing out fossil fuels and on co-developing environmentally holistic actions for mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage, to effectively address climate change together with toxic pollution, biodiversity loss, and food and water insecurity in the context of the just transition.
