described climate change as an ethical and moral challenge of a global scale that demands a human rights solution. Recognizing the importance of human rights in this context, parties to the UNFCCC have agreed to “fully respect human rights in all climate change-related actions”.7 Despite the clear human rights implications of failure to act to prevent climate change, the international community has not taken adequate preventive action. In fact, some of the climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts that have been employed to date have had counterproductive human rights impacts, particularly on the most marginalized. Taken as a whole, existing climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts have fallen far short of the level of ambition necessary to prevent and/or remedy the negative human rights impacts of climate change in fulfilment of the obligations of States and other duty-bearers. Integrating human rights in climate actions will necessitate higher levels of ambition and improve mitigation and adaptation strategies by making them more effective and inclusive. During the panel discussion, several delegations underlined the importance of integrating human rights in climate policy, including participation, access to information and access to justice. A human rights based approach addresses cross cutting social, cultural, political and economic problems, while empowering persons, groups and peoples, especially those in vulnerable situations. This can make considerable contributions to climate change policies, making them less myopic and more responsive, sensitive, and collaborative. What human rights principles apply in the context of climate change? “These are basic issues of justice.” Olav Fykse Tveit, General Secretary, World Council of Churches States are obligated to respect, protect, promote, and fulfil all human rights for all people. This includes an affirmative obligation to prevent foreseeable harms including those caused by climate change. The UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and the UN Declaration on the Right to Development all make clear that State human rights obligations require both individual action and international cooperation. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms therein can be fully realized and everyone has duties to the community. Similarly, the ICCESCR declares that States should “take steps, individually and through international assistance and co-operation, especially economic and technical, to the maximum of [their] available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of rights recognized in the present Covenant”. The Declaration on the Right to Development further calls on States to establish through their individual and collective actions, national and international conditions favourable to the realization of the right to development and all human rights including through international cooperation to provide developing countries “with appropriate means and facilities to foster their 7 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Report of the Conference of the Parties on its sixteenth session (Cancun: United Nations, 2010), FCCC/CP/2010/7/Add.1. Page 7 of 28