NEW YORK, September 23, 2024—The UN Summit of the Future, which concludes today, brought together leaders from 193 UN member states on September 22-23 to revisit global governance in the face of escalating crises such as climate change, geopolitical tensions, and inequality.
The resulting Pact for the Future, the Global Digital Compact, and the Declaration on Future Generations, a 61-page blueprint approved by the UN General Assembly on Sunday, outlines measures to foster the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, including commitments to accelerate finance for climate adaptation, invest in renewable energy, and improve the way human progress is measured—going beyond GDP to capture human and planetary wellbeing. It reaffirms the need to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels.
However, experts from the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) say that the outcomes fall short of transformative actions necessary to ensure a just transition from fossil fuels, and the Summit’s commitments are not firmly grounded in the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment—recognized by the UN General Assembly in 2022—which is critical for ensuring the human rights of present and future generations.
Nikki Reisch, CIEL’s Director of Climate & Energy, said: “We can’t ‘deliver a better present’ or ‘safeguard the future’ merely by repeating pledges of the past. Yet States at the UN Summit of the Future failed to offer any more specifics about how they will accelerate the transition away from all fossil fuels—not just in the energy sector but economy-wide— by when, and with what funds. Securing human rights, peace and justice for all, today and tomorrow, requires transformative actions to confront the main driver of the crises destabilizing the present and threatening the future—fossil fuels and the false solutions that perpetuate the status quo.”
Sébastien Duyck, CIEL Senior Attorney and Campaign Manager for Human Rights and Climate Change said: “The Summit of the Future offered a critical opportunity to put human rights, including the rights to a healthy environment and of future generations, at the heart of global governance. Unfortunately, references to the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment — already recognized by the UN — are notably absent from the commitments made by world leaders. Grounding global governance in the human rights to a healthy environment and of future generations is crucial to advancing justice, peace, and securing transformative change for those to come. The absence of political will at the summit does not diminish the binding legal nature of existing human rights obligations.”
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