UN: Environmental threats are the biggest challenge to human rights

UN rights chief referred to thus summer's natural disasters in Germany and California

An aerial view of the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of the Whitsunday Islands, along the central coast of Queensland. AFP

Islands and Protected Areas of the Gulf of California. © UNESCO

Salonga National Park. © UNESCO

Lake Turkana is situatated in the Great Rift Valley in Kenya. It is the world's largest desert lake and the world's largest alkaline lake. Rocks in the surrounding area are predominantly volcanic. Getty Images

Elephants stand in tall grass in the Garamba National Park in north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. AFP

Mount Nimba Strict Nature Reserve. © UNESCO

Niokolo-Koba National Park. © UNESCO

Dja Faunal Reserve in Cameroon. © UNESCO

Virunga National Park. © UNESCO

Zebras and Wildebeast graze in Selous Game Reserve, southern Tanzania. AFP

Aïr and Ténéré Natural Reserves in Niger. Alamy

East Rennell (Solomon Islands). © UNESCO

Clouds are reflected in the Florida Everglade. AFP

A male Grauer's gorilla, a critically endangered species, rests in the forest of Kahuzi-Biega National Park in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo. AFP

Okapi Wildlife Reserve, Democratic Republic of Congo. Alamy

Aerial view of rainforest Leuser Mountain National Park which is one of the national parks listed in UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, the Tropical Rainforest Heritage of Sumatra in Aceh, Indonesia. Getty Images

Aerial view of the Rio Platano biosphere reserve in La Mosquitia region, Honduras. AFP

The UN rights chief on Monday said that the “triple planetary crises” of climate change, pollution and nature loss, represented the biggest threat to human rights globally.

“As these environmental threats intensify, they will constitute the single greatest challenge to human rights of our era,” said Michelle Bachelet at the opening of the human rights council, referring to recent “extreme and murderous” climate events such as floods in Germany and California's wildfires.

The International Monetary Fund is also urging countries to scale up green investments and set a higher global carbon pricing floor to reduce the adverse effects of climate change.

Green supply policies could result in a 2 per cent increase in the global gross domestic product this decade, creating “millions of jobs”, Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director of the IMF wrote in the bank's Finance and Development magazine's September issue.

“We must set the bar higher — indeed, our common future depends on it,” she added.

In related news, former Bank of England governor Mark Carney had said that governments must join hands in making climate-related financial disclosures mandatory and support, and there is a lot that still needs to be done to mitigate climate risks, despite the global financial industry increasingly demanding Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures reporting.

Last week, a study published in Frontiers in Water said that unabated climate change will cause more extreme summer droughts in European hot spots by the end of the century, highlighting the problem of loss of natural resources,

The report named France, the Alps, the Mediterranean and the Iberian Peninsula as areas of particular concern, where there could be a more than 50 per cent increase in the frequency of extreme summer droughts.