A/74/161 72. The five main responsibilities of businesses specifically related to climate change are to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from thei r own activities and their subsidiaries; reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their products and services; minimize greenhouse gas emissions from their suppliers; publicly disclose their emissions, climate vulnerability and the risk of stranded assets; and ensure that people affected by business-related human rights violations have access to effective remedies. 90 In addition, businesses should support, rather than oppose, public policies intended to effectively address climate change. IV. Conclusion and recommendations 73. Climate change is already harming billions of people, violating human rights, exacerbating inequality and perpetuating injustice. Parties to the Paris Agreement are not on track to meet their commitments. Instead of falling, global emissions are rising. Instead of phasing out fossil fuels, States provide subsidies and banks offer financing, both measured in trillions of dollars annually. New coal-fired power plants are still being built. Instead of reforestation, deforestation continues. Funding has fallen short of the promised $100 billion per year. Between 2015 and 2018, the Green Climate Fund received only $10.3 billion in total pledges and the United States refuses to pay $2 billion that it committed. 91 74. A failure to fulfil international climate change commitments is a prima facie violation of the State’s obligations to protect the human rights of its citizens. As global average temperatures rise, even more people’s rights will be violated, and the spectre of catastrophic runaway climate chaos increases. There is an immense gap between what is needed to seriously tackle the global climate emergency and what is being done. 75. A dramatic change of direction is needed. To comply with their human rights obligations, developed States and other large emitters must reduce their emissions at a rate consistent with their international commitments. To meet the Paris target of limiting warming to 1.5°C, States must submit ambitious nationally determined contributions by 2020 that will put the world on track to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 45 per cent by 2030 (as calculated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). All States should prepare rights-based deep decarbonization plans intended to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050, in accordance with article 4, paragraph 19, of the Paris Agreement. Four main categories of actions must be taken: addressing society’s addiction to fossil fuels; accelerating other mitigation actions; protecting vulnerable people from climate impacts; and providing unprecedented levels of financial support to least developed countries and small island developing States. A. Addressing society’s addiction to fossil fuels 76. Fossil fuel burning accounts for more than 70 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Even the continued use of existing fossil fuel infrastructure for its expected lifespan would generate emissions (658 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide) that exhaust the available carbon budget (580 billion tons) for limi ting warming to 1.5°C. 92 Clearly, emissions from fossil fuels need to be reduced, beginning immediately. 77. To address society’s addiction to fossil fuels, all States should: (a) Immediately terminate all fossil fuel subsidies, except for clean cookstove programmes; (b) Stop building new coal-fired power plants unless equipped with carbon capture and storage technology, and require existing coal -fired power plants to be retrofitted with carbon capture and storage technology or be closed __________________ 90 91 92 18/22 Expert Group on Climate Obligations of Enterprises, Principles on Climate Obligations of Enterprises: Legal Perspectives for Global Challenges (Expert Group on Climate Obligations of Enterprises, 2018). See www.greenclimate.fund/how-we-work/resource-mobilization. D. Tong and others, “Committed emissions from existing energy infrastructure jeopardize 1.5°C climate target”, Nature (July 2019). 19-11977