Ensuring ‘climate justice’

Human rights and gender equality must be enshrined in the legally binding section of a new global climate change deal in order to secure climate justice for the poorest and most vulnerable, top human rights advocate and UN climate envoy Mary Robinson said.

There has been controversy over where references to human rights should sit in the agreement, expected in Paris this week. Some countries – including Norway and the US – want it only in the non-binding introduction, experts say.

“We have to keep our eye on it; we have to keep making sure it’s understood that it’s not just words – it’s the values,” said Robinson, a former Irish president who runs her own foundation for climate justice.

Strong, binding language on respecting human rights is needed because “we’ve had a lot of mistakes – corn for ethanol that drove up food prices, and big dams that displaced people without proper land rights”, she said.

“We have had problems and we need hooks of values in the agreement that prevent bad climate policy, that promote good climate policy,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview on the sidelines of the Paris talks.

Speaking at the opening of the UN climate summit in...