According to the IPCC, major health impacts of climate change will include greater risk of injury, disease and death due to, among others, more intense heat waves and fires increased risk of under-nutrition as a result of diminished food production in poor regions and increased risks of diseases from food and water, and vector-borne diseases.

We all have the right to enjoy the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. The World Health Organization predicts that climate change will cause 250,000 deaths per year between 20. But there are many other less visible ways that climate change threatens lives. The most obvious example is through extreme weather-related events, such as storms, floods and wildfires. But climate change threatens the life and safety of billions of people on this planet. We all have the right to life, and to live in freedom and safety. This is why the failure of governments to act on the climate crisis in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence may well be the biggest inter-generational human rights violation in history. Its effects will continue to grow and worsen over time, creating ruin for current and future generations. Human rights are intimately linked with climate change because of its effect on not just the environment but our own well-being. How does climate change impact human rights?

Large-scale action is required immediately, but urgency must not be an excuse to violate human rights. The world’s leading scientific body for the assessment of climate change – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)– warns that global greenhouse gas emissions must ‘peak before 2025 at the latest, and be reduced by 43% by 2030 if we are to limit climate change to 1.5☌ and avoid complete catastrophe. The devastation that climate change is causing and will continue to cause means it is code red for humanity. There has been severe flooding in Pakistan, while a prolonged and intense drought in Madagascarhas left 1 million people with very limited access to adequate food. Scorching temperatures have caused deadly heatwaves in Europe and wildfires in South Korea, Algeria and Croatia. Millions of people are already suffering from the catastrophic effects of extreme weather disasters exacerbated by climate change – from prolonged drought in sub-Saharan Africa to devastating tropical storms sweeping across Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific. It’s easy to take our planet for granted until we see the human cost of its degradation: hunger, displacement, unemployment, illness and deaths.

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