The amici are united in their common concern at the scale and urgency of the climate crisis, the impacts of which are now felt on a daily basis throughout the Philippines and around the world. As an extensive body of peer-reviewed science demonstrates, climate change is causing severe environmental, economic, and social impacts at current levels of planetary warming, and these impacts only will intensify with any additional warming. As the impacts of Typhoon Haiyan prove all too clearly, climate change is already resulting in adverse impacts to human lives and impairments of human rights across the Philippines. Through rising sea levels, changing hydrology regimes and weather patterns, promotion of disease vectors, and exacerbation of extreme weather events, climate change has caused and will continue to cause deaths, injuries, property destruction, and human displacement, while also causing other gradual forms of environmental degradation that undermine and will continue to undermine access to clean water, food, and other key resources. All of these impacts impair fundamental rights including the rights to life, health, clean water and sanitation, food, adequate housing, self-determination and development, and equality and non-discrimination. These effects will fall disproportionately on populations who are disadvantaged due to poverty, gender, age, disability, cultural, or ethnic background, and children and future generations who will experience increasingly severe impacts over time. Given these immense human rights impacts, it is equally important that people have access to justice. Too often the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups in society not only suffer the most, but also have little recourse. As such and as recognized in multiple international fora, it is critically important they have access to justice, including redress and remedy for environmental harm and for violations of their human rights. This groundbreaking proceeding before the Commission presents one such critically important avenue. Though the present inquiry is not judicial in nature, the Commission’s findings and recommendations can play a vital role in bringing the truth to light, laying the foundations for accountability, and respecting, protecting, and promoting human rights in the Philippines and beyond. We are deeply honored to contribute our support and our input to the Commission in this important endeavor. Respectfully, Carroll Muffett, President & CEO Erika Lennon, Senior Attorney Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) Sophie Marjanac Lawyer (Australian qualified) ClientEarth Dr. Annalisa Savaresi Dr. Ioana Cismas Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions & Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions Bern Johnson Executive Director U.S. office of the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (ELAW) 2