A/74/161 result of climate change. In addition, climate mitigation projects have jeopardized or violated indigenous rights, including the Barro Blanco hydropower project in Panama, the Water Towers Protection and Climate Change Mitigation and A daptation Programme in Kenya and the Agua Zarca dam in Honduras. 57 50. Persons with disabilities could also be disproportionately affected by climate change. The Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities emphasized that States must ensure that the requirements of all persons with disabilities are taken into consideration when designing and implementing adaptation and disaster risk reduction measures. 58 51. Small island developing States produce only 0.03 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet experience some of the most severe impacts of climate change. Nine of the ten worst climate-related disasters between 1998 and 2017, measured by losses as a percentage of GDP, involved storms that devastated small island developing States. 59 III. Human rights obligations relating to climate change 52. The purpose of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is to achieve “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system” (see article 2). In other words, States committed themselves to ensuring a safe climate, which is vital to the enjoyment of a broad range of human rights. 53. In 2010, in Cancún, Mexico, the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change adopted Decision 1/CP.16, in which they noted that the adverse effects of climate change have implications for the effective enjoyment of human rights, that the effects will be felt most acutely by those segments of the population that are already vulnerable, and that States parties should, in all climate change-related actions, fully respect human rights. 60 54. The Paris Agreement represents a breakthrough, in that it explicitly links h uman rights and climate change. In the Agreement, the parties acknowledged that they “should, when taking action to address climate change, respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights, the right to health, the rights of indigenous peoples, local communities, migrants, children, persons with disabilities and people in vulnerable situations and the right to development, as well as gender equality, empowerment of women and intergenerational equity.” The Paris Agreement refined the concept of a safe climate as “well below” a 2ºC increase in the average global temperature, and ideally limited to a 1.5ºC increase. 55. The human rights obligations related to climate change have been explored by the Human Rights Council, the special procedures, the treaty bodies, Governments, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights 61 and many international agencies. The following summary of this work is intended to be illustrative rather than exhaustive. All of these experts have reached two common conc lusions: first, climate change and its impacts threaten a broad range of human rights, and second, as a result, States and private actors have extensive human rights obligations and responsibilities. 56. Early milestones were the 2005 Inuit petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights asserting that greenhouse gas emissions from the United States were violating the human rights of the Inuit, and the Malé Declaration on the Human Dimension of Global Climate Change. Although the Inuit petition was ruled inadmissible, it was a catalyst for action, including a hearing on climate change held by the Inter-American Commission in 2006. The Malé Declaration, adopted by representatives of small island developing States in 2007, was the first intergovernmental statement explicitly recognizing that climate change has “clear and immediate implications for the full enjoyment of human rights”. __________________ 57 58 59 60 61 14/22 A/HRC/36/46. CRPD/C/SYC/CO/1. Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters and United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, Economic Losses, Poverty and Disasters 1998–2017 (Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters and United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, 2018). FCCC/CP/2010/7/Add.1. Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Advisory Opinion OC-23/17 of 15 November 2017 requested by the Republic of Colombia. 19-11977