The lecture illustrates the “logic of sacrifice” underpinning the fossil fuel-based economy, which is the main cause of climate change and its compounding human rights impacts. The notion of “logic of sacrifice” has been developed from the previous UN human rights work on “sacrifice zones” – areas where communities already in disproportionately vulnerable situations because of poverty, marginalization and racialization, are exposed to high risks of chronic illness and inter-generational environmental harm due to a concentration of harmful industrial activities. It is here argued that sacrifice zones are the most visible manifestation of a much broader, underlying logic of sacrifice underpinnng the fossil fuel-based economy that affects many other individuals and communities, in some cases even global society in less visible but still very harmful ways. The notion of logic of sacrifice is thus explored on the basis of combined evidence from human rights holders’ lived experiences, climate science, as well as planetary and human health science.
Against this conceptual and scientific backdrop, the lecture explores the international obligations of States to phase out fossil fuels not only in the energy sector, but across our economies (notably in food systems). These legal interpretations have been advanced in my thematic reports as the UN Special Rapporteur on Climate Change and Human Rights. But they are further articulated here in the light of the three Advisory Opinions on States’ obligations on climate change by the International Court of Justice (ICJ),1 the Inter-American Court of Human Rights2 and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS).3 In particular, attention will be focused on the opportunities to bring about transformative change through international obligations related to defossilization, with a view to moving away from the logic of sacrifice towards economies and societies of care. To that end, the lecture draws also on the Advisory Opinion of the Inter-American Court on the content and scope of the right to care and its interrelationship with other rights.4
The lecture will start by painting a wider picture of legal clarifications on State obligations on climate change and human rights arising from the converging and complementary findings of the three Advisory Opinions (section 1). It will then discuss the evidence about a logic of sacrifice underpinning fossil fuel-based economies and contrast it with the obligations to protect human rights and the life-supporting systems of the planet in the context of the climate crisis (section 2). The lecture will then clarify whose human rights are being sacrificed by continued reliance on fossil fuel-based economies, with a view to illustrating the much broader sections of society whose health and socio-economic and cultural well-being are being undermined (section 3). The lecture will then reflect on how advancing a defossilization of our economies as a human rights imperative can support a transformation of the logic of sacrifice into a logic of care (section 4).
1. Protecting Human Rights in the Context of Climate Change
The ICJ clarified that States have a customary, stringent due diligence obligation to prevent significant harm to the climate system as a whole,5 rejecting any artificial distinction based on siloed understandings of the different components of the environment.6 It then drew on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)7 objective to stabilize greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, as well as its specific obligations to both limit activities emitting GHGs and to protect and enhance sinks and reservoirs.8 And it confirmed the applicability of the Convention on Biological Diversity,9 the Convention to Combat Desertification10 and the Convention on the Law of the Sea11 to all climate action.12 In other words, the ICJ clarified the need to read together more specific obligations on the protection of nature – on land and in the sea – with the broader objective of stabilizing GHG concentrations in the atmosphere at “a level” and “within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.”13
Further, the Court emphasized that all States are subject to these obligations, and should “use all the means at [their] disposal” to protect and enhance carbon sinks in accordance with the three Rio Conventions as part of the customary law obligations to prevent significant climate harm.14 This is exemplified by the prevention of the destruction of carbon sinks through deforestation and other activities, as “a continuing duty to preserve and improve the absorption capacity of reservoirs and sinks, notwithstanding any breaches of [relevant] obligations under the climate change treaties,” which could give rise to legal consequences under the law of State responsibility, including the duty of cessation.15
This reading is aligned with the Advisory Opinion of ITLOS, notably its second half that clarified that the prevention of harm to marine biodiversity and the restoration of ecosystems under UNCLOS general obligation to protect the marine environment should be understood as an obligation of mitigation and adaptation.16 And this reading also resonates with the Advisory Opinion of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which upheld a holistic understanding of the inter-connected life-supporting systems of our planet as the object of protection of the human right to a health environment, including its specific component of a human right to a safe climate.17 Such a holistic reading is then mirrored back in the ICJ’s recognition of the human right to a healthy environment as a “precondition”, “inherent,” and “essential” for the enjoyment of all other human rights.18
The importance of this holistic understanding of the interconnectedness of the climate system with other life-supporting systems cannot be overstated: part of the reason why the international climate regime has not made more progress in implementation is a prevailing “carbon tunnel vision.”19 Such carbon tunnel vision has prevented more integrated approaches across the Rio Conventions and even led to climate mitigation and adaptation measures that harm the environment, and therefore harm the climate system because of the damage to nature’s contributions to the regulation of the climate.20 Crucially, this is also one the causes of the human rights harm caused by certain climate measures.21 Even more relevant for present purposes, the carbon tunnel vision is also part of the reason why we have not made more progress on phasing out fossil fuels under the international climate change regime, despite settled climate science indicating that fossil fuels are the main cause of climate change.22 In other words, the carbon tunnel vision has helped downplaying the negative impacts of fossil fuels throughout their full life cycle in terms of biodiversity loss and toxic pollution and across all sectors of our economies.23
Conversely, the indivisible, interdependent and interrelated nature of human rights24 must be understood in the light of the inter-connectedness between the climate system and all other life-supporting systems on the planet.25 Against this background, then, all available evidence on the harm caused by fossil fuels to all life-supporting systems and their inter-dependence with human rights, across time and space, should be taken into account to better understand States’ obligations to protect the climate system and human rights.
2. The Logic of Sacrifice of Fossil Fuel-based Economies
The burning of fossil fuels is the main historical and current driver of greenhouse gas emissions. It has been responsible for 81 to 91 per cent of the total historic anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions,26 which currently “are higher than at any time over at least the past two million years”.27 Fossil fuel production and distribution are the second-largest source of methane emissions, which are responsible for around 30 per cent of the global temperature rise since the Industrial Revolution.28 The existing fossil fuel infrastructure is producing, over its lifetime, emissions of carbon dioxide that are already projected to exceed the remaining carbon budget for limiting warming to 1.5°C.29
For causing all this climate harm, fossil fuels are the main cause of the widespread, increasingly severe and compounded human rights impacts of climate change on individuals and groups in vulnerable situations (including the rights to life, self-determination, health, food, water, housing, education and work, and cultural rights), and their multiplier effect on gender-based violence, human trafficking and slavery.30
In addition, fossil fuels are causing other layers of localized and diffuse human rights harm, due to sacrifice zones, negative impacts on global health and global food security, environmental and human rights harm across food systems and the plastics life cycle, as well as undermining of peace. The evidence of all these forms of environmental and human rights harm, which are well known to fossil fuel and other companies participating in the fossil fuel-based economy, represent inter-locking expressions of an underpinning logic of sacrifice.
2.1 Sacrifice Zones
Multiple fossil fuel operations are clustered in areas already characterized by poverty, limited public services and inadequate environmental governance, so that communities already in disproportionately vulnerable situations because of poverty, marginalization and racialization face high risk of chronic respiratory, cardiac and reproductive conditions, and cancers. These areas are called “sacrifice zones” –a concept which was explored from an international human rights law perspective in a seminal thematic report by former UN Special Rapporteurs on Human Rights and the Environment, David Boyd, and on Toxics, Marcos Orellana, in 2022. They noted that these zones are often created through the collusion of governments and businesses, representing forms of discrimination that harm the interests of present and future generations. They considered that sacrifice zones violate both the obligation of using maximum available resources to protect human rights and of prioritizing those most in need. Additionally, they noted that higher poverty and lower levels of health literacy and awareness about pollution risks in sacrifice zones hinder protective behaviours, advocacy, as well as access to justice and effective remedies.31
Fossil fuel-related sacrifice zones are associated with health impacts such as higher rates of respiratory and cardiovascular conditions due to chronic pollution exposure; mental health and cognitive development, exacerbating educational and social challenges; higher rates of adverse birth outcomes, such as preterm births, low birth weight, and developmental disabilities linked to environmental exposures; and chronic stress from constant exposure to environmental hazards and socioeconomic challenges, which further exacerbate health problems.32
These human rights impacts disproportionality affect women and children. Proximity to natural gas development, to coal fire power plants and to major roads are all associated with increased asthma exacerbations and hospitalizations in children.33 Children attending a school near a refinery are found to have higher blood pressure and higher rates of prehypertension than those at schools that were farther from the refineries.34 Pregnant women and newborns face increased risks of preterm birth, low birth weight, and lifelong health complications from fossil fuel-driven air pollution, toxic exposures, and extreme heat.35 Infertility is then associated with mental health conditions and can also be the source of stigma and societal rejection for women.36
While the concept of sacrifice zones is extremely powerful to illustrate the depths of human rights harm that can be associated with certain forms of fossil fuel economy, it may lend itself to support a false assumption that fossil fuel-related harm is “limited” to certain areas, while other areas and larger sectors of society are “spared”. Increasingly, however, the evidence of transboundary and diffuse environmental and human rights harm from the full life-cycle of fossil fuels counter this assumption that fossil fuels-based economies are sacrificing “somebody else”.
This evidence rather leads to discover a deeper “logic of sacrifice” whereby sacrifice zones represent the “tip of the iceberg” of widespread human rights impacts of the inter-twined ecological planetary crisis (climate change, biodiversity loss and toxic pollution) and economic inequality that arise from fossil fuels across geographies and generations. Such a logic reveals that the profit-making model of the fossil fuel-based economy is knowingly premised on foreseeable and highly diffuse, in many cases globally spread, violations of human rights.
2.2 Global Health and Environmental Impacts of Fossil Fuels
Such logic of sacrifice emerges if one considers the risks of climate change impacts becoming catastrophic and irreparable for the populations of small island developing States,37 and children everywhere.38 It also emerges from continued oil and gas expansion increasingly targeting areas of high biodiversity importance, including in the ocean, harming natural processes that sequester carbon dioxide, to the detriment of everyone’s right to healthy ecosystems and the diverse benefits that they provide, including support for human resilience in the context of climate change.39
But the logic of sacrifice inherent in the fossil fuel-based economy transcends climate impacts. Each stage of the fossil fuel life cycle entails significant and pervasive risks and harm for the rights to life, health and an adequate standard of living and for cultural rights throughout. Critically, such multifaceted harm from fossil fuels would continue even if all greenhouse gas emissions were captured or offset, as the sources of harm are separate and additional to these emissions. And these human rights impacts do not remain localized.
For one thing, Amnesty International revealed that one in 5 people (at least 2 billion people and 520 million children globally) are in the vicinity of some fossil fuel infrastructure.40 And there are plenty of examples of fossil fuels negatively impacting human rights at great distances too. For instance, fossil fuel burning in power plants, industrial settings and housing are a major contributor to transboundary air pollution, damaging every organ in the human body, and worsening pre-existing health conditions, particularly for women and children. Fossil fuel-related air pollution contributes to over 8 million premature deaths annually worldwide, occurring mostly in low- and middle-income countries.41 Further, fossil fuel-related accidents remain “among the most significant and environmentally damaging disasters worldwide”: they travel hundreds of kilometres and last for years in the sediment and marine environment.42 Each year, up to 800 million litres of oil enters the marine environment from the extraction, transportation, and consumption of crude oil and the products refined from it.43
Yet another example is provided by emissions from gas flaring, which are linked to $7.4 billion of damage to health globally.44 Accumulated oil pollution from gas flaring leads to severe contamination of land and underground water, including dangerous concentrations of benzene in drinking water, with associated health impacts including skin infections, respiratory illness, and higher rates of cancer.45 Once again, children’s human rights are disproportionately impacted: a World Bank study found a strong positive association between gas flaring and the incidence of respiratory diseases and fever among children younger than five years.46
A host of additional examples relating to the negative impacts of fossil fuels on the marine environment substantiate the logic of sacrifice. Fossil fuel burning is a source of inorganic mercury – one of the 10 most poisonous substances to human health, in the ocean, affecting food webs and the health of populations that consume seafood regularly, including foetal health, particularly foetal brain development,47 leading to deficits in fine motor skills, language and memory.48 Fossil fuel burning is also a significant source of nutrients leading to an increase in harmful algal blooms, including toxic algal events, which can lead to shellfish and fish becoming poisonous, causing paralysis and other illnesses in humans.49 Further, offshore oil and gas operations pollute the marine environment daily through the release of toxic water and drilling fluids. These discharges gradually erode water quality and can cause long-term harm to marine ecosystems and the populations that depend on them.50 Recent projections predict that global offshore gas production could increase 55% by 2050, faster than the expected growth in onshore production.51
Paradoxically, fossil fuel infrastructure is also sacrificed, as long as the costs and impacts are externalized. Approximately 35 per cent of global refining capacity is exposed to annual flood risks and sea-level rise,52 which are likely to intensify due to worsening climate change. This then leads to higher risks of oil spills, shutdowns, chemical leaks and explosions, and populations’ higher health risks – exacerbated by the disruption of healthcare services during extreme weather events, and property damage, and displacement. The cost of infrastructure repair and environmental remediation further aggravates the burdens on affected communities and taxpayers.53
Finally, despite the links between the fossil fuel-based economy and masculinity,54 even the latter is sacrificed. Studies show that reduced sperm count is attributable to fossil fuel-related pollution; and that growing cases of testicular cancer, premature puberty and congenital malformations appear originating in contact with fossil fuels.55
2.3 The Global Impacts of Fossil Fuels across Food Systems
The sacrifice logic is confirmed and expanded in the context of petro-chemicals – plastics, fertilizers and pesticides. And this is very alarming as fossil fuel expansion is increasingly driven by the chemical industry, rather than the energy industry, in terrestrial and aquatic food systems. This is not a coincidence: large-scale food, petrochemical and fossil fuel industries have co-evolved and are increasingly integrated.56 Many of the world’s biggest oil companies produce pesticides or their chemical ingredients.57 Single-use plastics underpinned the rapid expansion of ultra-processed foods globally.58 The co-development allowed the fossil fuel industry to keep expanding beyond the energy sector.59 Thus, dominating agrifood companies have vested interests in promoting and perpetuating fossil fuels and petrochemicals.60
These economic interactions explain why food systems generate nearly 80% of global nitrous oxide emissions (with the potential to warm the planet 273 times more than carbon dioxide within a century) and around 50% of anthropogenic methane emissions (which have 80 times higher warming potential than carbon dioxide within a decade).61 Pesticides and chemical fertilizers, together with other components of the pre- and post-production stages, are responsible for an estimated 5–10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to emissions, food systems are the largest contributor to the transgression of the planetary boundaries which further negatively impact on the climate system: biodiversity loss, land-system change, ocean acidification and geochemical cycles, due to the degradation of soil, water and ecosystem integrity. As a result, less than 1% of the world’s population has their human rights and food needs met within planetary boundaries, while the wealthiest 30% of people drive more than 70% of food-related environmental and climate impacts.62
The expansion of fossil fuels in all their forms into food systems comes at the expense of global health and access to nutritious food. Over the last 70 years, the pervasive use of plastics in agri-food systems and food value chains has caused water and soil pollution and reduced agricultural yields.63 In addition, soils – which are among the largest carbon sinks – are not only losing their ability to produce food, but also to produce nutritious food and to store carbon. This multiplies climate change impacts on the right to food,64 while causing a combined epidemic of malnutrition, obesity and non-communicable diseases.65
In addition, single-use packaging of ultra-processed foods accounts for over a third of global plastics demand. Leveraging a dominant market position, global food and beverage companies, working with fossil fuel companies, rapidly scaled up production, with cheap, lightweight plastics enabling them to aggressively expand into new markets, benefiting from decades of fossil fuel subsidies and shaping consumption habits in ways that become routine and unnoticed.66 Flexible plastics used for ultra-processed foods are impossible to recycle through conventional mechanical recycling. They contribute to the migration of hazardous chemicals, including endocrine disruptors and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) or “forever chemicals”, owing to the higher fat and acidic content of ultra-processed foods and extended contact between food content and packaging, long shelf lives and distribution in global markets.67 Academic analysis revealed that producers of PFAS knew already in the 1970s that these chemicals were “highly toxic when inhaled and moderately toxic when ingested”.68 Instead of disclosing this information, these companies ghostwrote an academic study which has provided inaccurate evidence of safety for 25 years.69 Migration of chemicals from food packaging into food and beverages is considered the largest least controlled source of human exposure to chemicals associated with plastic.70 The rapid expansion of ultra-processed foods as a globalized commodity relies on cheap, easily exchangeable ingredients resulting in foods that can be sold at a much higher price than their production cost. These foods cause addiction and overeating, posing a great risk of obesity and non-communicable diseases. 71
2.4 Further Sacrifice of Health and the Environment arising from Plastics
Plastics pollution is projected to increase to 15% of the global carbon budget72 and is implicated in the transgression of other planetary boundaries, exacerbating climate impacts via interactions between functional Earth systems, including indirect effects change through changing albedo, altering carbon sinks, or changing carbon cycles of marine and terrestrial environments.73 Marine plastic pollution alters the global carbon cycling through effects on plankton and primary production in marine systems (notably, mangroves, seagrasses, corals and salt marshes that sequester carbon).74 Studies estimate that plastics cost at least $13 billion dollars in damage to the world’s ecosystems yearly.75
Even when plastics is recycled, it causes further harm to the environment and human health. Less than 10% of the plastics produced is currently being recycled, the remaining being incinerated (12%) or disposed in the environment or in landfills (79%). “Existing plastic recycling practices pose health threats from volatile organic compounds and they concentrate toxic additives in plastics, generating new hazardous products”.76 In addition, “Toxics additives and micro-plastics contained in…oceans…cannot be eliminated by recycling, landfilling or incineration.”77 Further, plastic waste trade further contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution,78 creating global sacrifice zones such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Plastic accumulation (notably microplastics and nanoplastics in the human body, including in the brain and in sperm)79 and plastics-associated air pollutants compound the health impacts of climate change in terms of increased vector-borne diseases and mental health.80 Microplastics enter the human body through food, water, air and skin contact. They have been detected in human organs, including the brain, kidneys, and liver, and even in the placenta of newborn babies.81 Some plastic products contain carcinogenic chemicals such as styrene and benzene, which are highly toxic if ingested and can lead to damage of the nervous system and lungs as well as to reproductive abnormalities.82
The extent of diffuse sacrifice of human health is hard to be determined. Over 16,000 chemicals are used in plastics, of which at least 4,200 are classified as persistent, bioaccumulative, mobile and/or toxic, yet only 6% are subject to global regulation.83 Plastic chemicals include known endocrine disruptors, carcinogens and mutagens, which have been identified in human blood, amniotic fluid and urine,84 with evidence of detrimental health effects even at very low levels.85 Health concerns include reproductive and developmental disorders, infertility, obesity and non-communicable diseases including diabetes, cardiovascular disease and many cancers.86 A majority of these chemicals are petro-additives or come from fossil-based materials. Furthermore, plastics contain novel entities – human-made chemicals not previously known to the Earth system87 that could have large-scale adverse environmental impacts because of widespread distribution through complex global supply chains and accumulation in organisms and the environment globally. Novel entities exceed humankind’s current ability to conduct safety assessments and monitoring.88
Plastic pollution also aggravates the impacts of flooding by clogging drainage systems and waterways. Mismanaged plastic waste obstructs drainage, causing floodwaters to rise more rapidly and recede more slowly. This not only creates safety hazards but also exacerbates severe outbreaks of cholera and other diarrheal diseases, particularly when combined with inadequate sanitation services. In this way, plastic and the fossil fuel-based economy inhibits the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment for people living in poverty.89
2.5 Sacrifice of Global Food Security and Health arising from Fossil-Based Agrochemicals
Expanding reliance on fossil fuels across food systems is premised on the sacrifice of food security and human health with global reach. Synthetic nitrogen fertiliser and most pesticides are driving fossil fuel expansion while other sectors are decarbonizing.90 Making ammonia, the basis for synthetic nitrogen fertilisers, requires fossil gas or coal as feedstocks, as well as a large amount of energy to produce the high temperatures and pressures needed for the reaction process. Ammonia produces more greenhouse gases than the production of any other industrial chemical, including making steel or cement. However, less than 40% of the emissions related to synthetic nitrogen fertilisers comes from the production stage. Around 60% comes for their use. This is primarily because microbes in the soil break down nitrogen fertilisers to produce nitrous oxide – a climate “superpollutant” nearly 300 times as powerful as CO2. The global climate impact of nitrogen fertilizer alone exceeds that of commercial aviation.91
Harm to the right to health results from more pesticide transforming into a gas, due to increased temperatures, poisoning anyone exposed to the toxic vapour. Globally, 44% of farmers are poisoned by pesticides every year. Chronic exposure to pesticides, including through the consumption of contaminated foods, undermines the right to health, as it is associated with increased risks of Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease, and possibly with infertility.92
In addition, agro-chemicals cause soil acidification, inland and coastal water eutrophication (over-enrichment with nutrients, resulting, e.g., in algae growth), biodiversity loss, and impacts on regional air quality,93 with well-documented human right impacts.94 Pesticides have a detrimental effect on soil microorganisms that are crucial for soil health and productivity, as well as for carbon and nitrogen cycles. Pesticide applications emit volatile organic compounds, reacting with nitrogen oxides and ultraviolet rays to produce ground-level ozone.95 Neonicotinoids, a type of insecticide, harm pollinators. The contribution to food security of honeybees alone has been estimated to be worth approximately 691 million pounds per year for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.96 Globally, 650,000 deaths (20% of mortality) and roughly 4 million new cases of paediatric asthma every year are due to poor air quality, largely due to nitrogen pollution from fertilizers. Excess fertilizer use can also cause nitrogen pollution of drinking water, which has been associated with methemoglobinemia, colorectal cancer, thyroid disease and birth defects.
Large-scale land acquisition and consolidation within the agribusiness sector also solidifies fossil-based export-oriented production models, thus limiting Governments’ policy options for diversified production models, seed sovereignty and low-input production models. Moreover, the biggest seed companies produce most of the agrochemicals correlated with genetically modified seeds. Those agrochemicals reduce biodiversity, which in turn lowers agricultural resilience, making farms more vulnerable to climate shocks.97 Genetically modified crops and proprietary seed systems often deepen Indigenous Peoples’ and peasants’ dependence on fossil fuel-intensive inputs protected by intellectual property and corporate value chains, undermining the right to food, cultural rights and the right to science, and reproducing colonial patterns of control over seeds, land and knowledge.98
2.6 Sacrifice of Global Peace because of Links between Fossil Fuels and the Military-Industrial Complex
Since the start of 2026, we have also seen clearer links between armed conflict, including illegal military aggression and genocide,99 and the fossil fuel’s logic of sacrifice – sacrificing peace and regional, even global stability, for gaining access to remaining fossil fuel reserves, and obtaining record high prices on fossil fuels and petrochemical fertilizers, while causing fuel and food prices crises. In addition, conflict also increases climate and health harm.100
It is indeed necessary to understand the economic links between fossil fuels and the military-industry complex, and also the role of fossil fuels as a driver of armed conflict. The global military-industrial complex is tightly linked to the fossil fuel-based economy and the production of petrochemicals for explosives employed in chemical warfare. Militarization is part of the fossil fuel-based economy, 101 being responsible for 5.5 per cent of global emissions, major loss of life and biodiversity, toxic pollution, increased dependence on imported food and strained local economies.102 Military activities destroy food systems, rendering soils and ecosystems unusable for decades, and disrupt chemical fertilizer supply chains,103 making food more insecure and expensive. In addition, greenhouse gas emissions from military activities and reconstruction, as well as toxic pollution and biodiversity loss, all go unaccounted.104 It is all the more important, therefore, that it has been argued that the ICJ Advisory Opinion does not exclude military emissions from States’ obligations to prevent climate harm so they can be held liable.105
2.7 Sacrifice of Public Finance
Finally, public finance is also being sacrificed, compounding the impacts of the fossil fuels’ sacrifice logic in terms of economic inequality.
Fossil fuel production subsidies are still significant – $400 billion, while climate harm from fossil fuels is estimated at $300 billion, and this is without counting subsidies for plastics production.106 These subsidies reduce significantly the amounts of public finance that can be devoted to climate action,107 while creating further inequalities:108 even when targeting low-income households through consumer-side subsidies, the richest 20 per cent of households in many developing countries receive on average more than six times the fossil fuel-related subsidy benefits of the poorest 20 per cent.109 In addition, subsidies to petrochemicals and to large-scale agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture represent yet another form of sacrifice of public finance:110 currently nearly a trillion dollars in subsidies support industrial agriculture annually.111 Of $540 billion, 87% is either distorting prices or is harmful for biodiversity, climate and human health. The majority of global agricultural subsidies has been given to commodities such as beef, milk and rice, which are responsible for high greenhouse gas emissions.112 Similar considerations apply to fisheries subsidies.113 In turn, public and private investments hinge upon sustained demand growth, that is, large-scale petrochemical projects for fossil fuel exporters are a diversification strategy against losses due to electrification, and they also hinge upon continued commitment to significant State subsidies to keep feedstock prices low.114
Tax evasion and financial secrecy further help fossil fuel expansion, taking even more funding away from climate action.115 In 2024, at least $100 billion to $240 billion was lost in unpaid tax, equivalent to 4 to 10 per cent of the fossil fuel industry’s global revenue.116 In addition, financial secrecy in “tax havens” enables the entrenching of high-carbon development pathways, allowing fossil fuel company owners to abuse their tax responsibilities, break monopoly laws, avoid international sanctions, launder money or funnel money into political processes.117 Financial secrecy also makes it difficult to monitor the accuracy of banks’ sustainability reporting on divesting from fossil fuels.118 In 2023, private sector banks provided $696 billion in financing to fossil fuel companies, totalling $6.9 trillion since the adoption of the Paris Agreement. As a result, the tax burdens of the just transition are placed on low- and middle-income households, while the loss of fiscal revenue and fiscal incentives for the just transition undermines the realization of economic, social and cultural rights, and the right to a healthy environment.119 What is more, fossil fuel companies are awarded exorbitant compensation for climate measures that threaten their expected profits, including in circumstances where damages would not be available under national law, under international investment law and its investor-State dispute settlement. These amounts historically have been “roughly equivalent to the gross domestic product of 45 of the world’s poorest or smallest countries put together” ($82.8 billion).120 This can be considered yet another form of subsidy – a subsidized insurance against regulatory change121 – for fossil fuel companies.
3. Whose Human Rights are Being Sacrificed?
There is clearly a wide range of inter-related human rights that are being sacrificed by continued reliance on the fossil fuel-based economy – the rights to self-determination, life, health, food, water, development and a healthy environment, particularly children’s rights to life, survival, development, health and a healthy environment. Lack or insufficient action to defossilize economies is expanding the range of human rights holders affected through space and across generations.
One of the overarching human rights harms is to the right to self-determination,122 which is a peremptory norm of international law. This is the case when the survival of States that contributed minimally to climate change is impaired by loss of territory to sea-level rise and/or protracted unsafe climatic conditions. This is also the case when people are substantially deprived of their means of subsistence because of the severe deterioration of entire ecosystems due to climate change. Further, this is the case when the cultural survival of the populations of small island developing States, Indigenous Peoples, people of African descent, peasants and small-scale fishers is impaired by loss of territories, protracted unsafe climatic conditions and/or severe ecosystem degradation.123
There are then very clear patterns of discrimination against Indigenous Peoples, peasants and people of African descent in the fossil fuel life cycle, not only in the context of sacrifice zones but also with increased pollution, land grabbing, forced displacement, conflicts, and attacks against environmental human rights defenders from these groups.124 These compounding human rights violations have profound, pervasive and intergenerational impacts on the rights to a livelihood, food and health, and on cultural rights, notably knowledge production and transmission. In addition, large-scale businesses who are most closely tied to fossil fuels are accumulating unprecedented amounts of finance, market power and natural resources, to the detriment of Indigenous Peoples and peasants. These are becoming increasingly existential threats to Indigenous Peoples’ and peasants’ knowledge systems and their human rights protection, at a time when they have been recognized by global scientific assessments as most suitable to bring about the transformative change we all need to reverse the planetary crises we face.125 They are also becoming a threat to global food security, as small-scale food systems feed 35-50% of the world’s population,126 and are being threatened by large-scale food systems that are a significant cause of climate change and of diminishing capacity of food systems to withstand climate change.
It is also very clear that children’s and women’s human rights are being routinely sacrificed, around the world, to the benefit of the fossil fuel-based economy. In countries where extreme climate events have already been experienced for at least a decade, the compounded human rights impacts on children – among others – go well beyond the threshold of “significant” harm necessary to trigger extraterritorial obligations,127 and amount rather to “serious and substantial” harm that further undermines the rights to self-determination and non-discrimination of entire States and cultures.128 It is worth recalling that the UN Committee on the Rights of Children considered climate change a form of structural violence against children, and climate inaction or insufficient action as a form of discrimination against children.129 The UN Committee against Discrimination against Women has also identified disproportionate impacts of climate change on women and girls, who face limited access to risk reduction schemes130 and compounding impacts for them due to loss and damage to property and livelihoods in the context of increased food insecurity, floods, droughts and unprecedented rise in temperatures.131 Impacts on women and children also relate to the right to care. As the Inter-American Court clarified in its Advisory Opinion on Care, “a structural overload of care responsibilities on women” has a negative impact on the effective enjoyment of their rights and the rights of persons in their care.132 Essentially, what is being sacrificed is the right of women and other carers to fulfil their life plans, personally and as part of a community, and their right to self-care, including reproductive and maternal health, mental health and wholesome nutrition.133
It is then the combined evidence of the sacrifice of the rights to life, health and development – particularly in the context of worsening climate change – that affects larger and larger sectors of the global population. Increasing risks of cancers and non-communicable diseases, in younger and younger people, arising from fossil fuels, plastics and other petro-chemicals are undermining “the general conditions in society that may give rise to direct threats to life or prevent individuals from enjoying their right to life with dignity”, from which we are all entitled to effective protection against public and private actors that cause such harm.134 These impacts are disproportionately experienced by persons in more vulnerable situations from a health or economic standpoint, but are reaching staggering levels of diffusion even in wealthy countries. Globally, by 2050, more than half a million additional deaths from climate-related dietary changes are anticipated: 1.4 billion additional women and children will be at risk of iron deficiency, with stunting rates potentially rising by 23 percent in sub-Saharan Africa and 62 percent in South Asia. In addition, malnutrition interacts with heat exposure in pregnancy, increasing the risk of low birthweight.135 And this is on top of air pollution’s impacts globally, causing 8 million premature deaths annually worldwide, and causing or worsening multiple health harms such as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, cancer, dementia, depression and developmental delays.136
In addition, the evidence on the economic inequalities associated with the fossil fuel industry due to wealth concentration and market volatility also leads to diffuse negative impacts on everyone’s right to development, notably in terms of increasing living costs across regions. Once again, this is an impact that has been experienced in disproportionate ways and for longer in developing countries, but it is now also affecting societies in developed countries. The negative impacts on the right to development should be understood in the light of the increasing evidence of the global and local socioeconomic impacts of climate change on different economic sectors: declining living standards and higher living costs; economic instability, hindering communities that have become fossil-fuel dependent from diversifying their economies; and weakened manufacturing and agricultural sectors.137 All these negative economic impacts further impair the rights to health and an adequate standard of living, and cultural rights.
Finally, the sacrifice of global peace and solidarity concerns us all, as it has become so stark in the context of the 2026 global fuel and food price crises linked to the conflict in Iran. This amounts to a sacrifice also of the links between human rights and solidarity, ignoring or denying the inter-connectedness of our destinies, human rights and life-supporting systems on this planet.138 As the Inter-American Court clarified in its Advisory Opinion on Care, “Solidarity is based on the idea of a common humanity and the interdependence of members of society. From this principle stems the duty of mutual respect and cooperation among individuals for the effective exercise of their rights and the achievement of common goals.”139 Solidarity and the interdependence of members of global society should be understood, for instance, in the light of climate science on tipping points – the irreversible biophysical tipping points that threaten fundamental ecological systems and processes that sustain life across the globe.140 This area of climate science helps understand the foreseeability of major human rights impacts, including extraterritorially, at the nexus of climate, food, water, and energy. For instance, the Atlantic Meridian Overturning Circulation collapse is expected to lead to widespread agricultural system collapse in Northern Europe, due to regional cooling. Ice sheet collapse and sea-level rise lead to flooding or saltwater intrusion of low-lying, coastal, and river delta agricultural areas, threatening food production globally, with risks to major farming regions such as the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta, Mekong Delta, Po Valley, and Nile Delta. Coral reef collapse would eliminate reef fisheries supporting over 150 million people in the Coral Triangle region alone, with complete loss of primary protein sources for many small island populations. Mountain glacier collapse exacerbates flooding and water security risks in Asia and Central and South America, in addition to potential detrimental effects on fishing in North America.141
4. Defossilization to Transform a Logic of Sacrifice into a Logic of Care
It is essential to recognise and fully understand the logic of sacrifice of the fossil fuel-based economy, in order to see how fossil fuels are hiding in plain sight in different forms – including as plastics, fertilizers, pesticides, toxics in ultra-processed foods – in different aspects of our lives, societies and economies, and how their profit-making model is inextricably premised on the sacrifice of everyone’s human rights. Based on that understanding, however, it is possible to shed light on how we can and must move away from such a logic of sacrifice and find our way towards economic models that are premised on a logic of care142 that is aligned with the inter-connectedness of our human rights with one another and with the life-supporting systems, across space and time.
As the Inter-American Court clarified in its Advisory Opinion on the Climate Emergency, to prevent irreversible environmental harm, States must develop sustainable development models that respect planetary boundaries, recognize the fundamental role of the long-term integrity and functionality of ecosystems and ensure the availability of crucial resources for present and future generations through coherent and effective legal tools in relation to fossil fuels, agriculture, livestock, deforestation and other land use in greenhouse gas-emitting sectors both within and outside their territory.143 These sustainable development models should continuously enhance human well-being, protecting human rights and the environment, and avoid reliance on unproven technological solutions that are inadequate for ensuring stringent due diligence.144 The Inter-American Court of Human Rights also recognized that protecting Indigenous science and peasants’ knowledge,145 is indispensable for protecting everyone’s human rights in the climate crisis, including in rethinking our food systems. In other words, the effective protection of the human rights of Indigenous Peoples, peasants, pastoralists and small-scale fishers – and respectful engagement with their knowledge systems – are essential to develop sustainable development models at a time when food systems are facing structural instability and should be prioritized, legally and financially, as climate mitigation action.146
Reading together the Advisory Opinions on the Climate Emergency and on Care, the Inter-American Court calls on States to rethink economic models based on an understanding of the relationship between the well-being of the individual, the community, and the environment. Thus, the Court indicated that States have the obligation to adopt measures to guarantee the protection, mitigation and remediation of the environment as an end in itself in light of significant harm, and as a means of guaranteeing human rights, including the right to care. These measures should recognize different models for organizing care work and, in particular, should place value on traditional, local knowledge and Indigenous science, which recognizes an indivisible relationship between care of the individual and care of the environment interwoven with the territory, the natural resources, and the ecological cycles, based on their specific worldview.147 The same understanding is now central to Western science on transformative change, as emphasized by the Inter-governmental Science-Policy Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.148
The same understanding emerges from the analyses of the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Poverty, who called on States to develop new economic models that provide goods and services that enhance human and planetary well-being, reducing the production of unnecessary and toxic products, and deprioritizing the demands of the richest groups of society who worsen social exclusion and extreme poverty.149 In my work as UN Special Rapporteur on Climate Change and Human Rights, I have specifically pointed to the fossil fuel phaseout as a precondition for the emergence of a healthier economic model at the nexus of biodiversity, water and food,150 health and climate change,151 that fully aligns the right to development with all substantive elements of the right to a healthy environment.152 These models need to be centred on intergenerational equity, without shifting the burden of mitigating and remedying climate change to future generations,153 and be in the best interests of the child in accordance with children’s right to development, respecting children’s agency not to be bound by choices made by others about their present and future.154
Ultimately, sustainable economic models must be constructed on the basis of the insights and lived experiences of all those who have been sacrificed by the fossil fuel-based economy. This includes fossil fuel-sector and petrochemicals workers, and waste pickers, taking into account the negative impacts on their rights to work and to enjoy just and favourable work conditions from their experiences of job instability and risky work environments, as well as the impacts on their health due to exposure to harmful chemicals, extreme heat and accidents.155
Crucially, effective remedies to climate and other harm caused by fossil fuels can support transformative change by reclaiming spaces for self-determination156 and restoring human connections with nature, thus facilitating individual and community healing and intergenerational alliances.157 Any remedy should be co-developed with affected human rights holders, in accordance with their assessments of impacts and holistic valuation of loss and damage experienced,158 taking into account intersectionality and historical and structural discrimination, with guarantees of access to justice and effective remedy.159 Such processes can help in the co-development of economic models that can support mitigation, adaptation, and the prevention of, and responses to, loss and damage, while ensuring the maximum available resources to tackle the planetary crises. To that end, all States should prioritize rehabilitation, through sociocultural and ecological restoration at the climate-biodiversity-water-food-health nexus, in self-determined ways that support160 care as a direct expression of respect for human dignity, a universal need and a shared duty, on which both human existence and the functioning of society depend.161 In that connection, these economic models should ensure “at a minimum, enhanced protection for vulnerable groups, particularly pregnant or breastfeeding women, children, adolescents, older persons, persons with disabilities, and those suffering from serious or chronic illnesses or those that compromise their independence and require care”, as well as specific protection mechanisms for persons who perform unpaid care work, recognizing their social contribution and guaranteeing conditions that allow them to perform their work with dignity.162
Along these lines, I have recommended “defossilizating knowledge” – preventing and combatting new forms of climate disinformation, as well as addressing proactively the legacy of six decades of fossil fuel companies’ playbook of climate obstruction.163 This recommendation should be implemented as part of States’ obligation to ensure the protection of the right to education in the context of the climate crisis and with a view to protecting the right to care, as clarified by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and support a broad understanding of the principle of social and gender co-responsibility shared by all sectors of society.164 This would also be a matter of primary obligations to protect children’s right to education in a way that supports also their right to information, science, participation in decision-making processes and their right to be heard,165 notably with a view to participating in the inter-generational co-development of fossil fuel-free economic models. This would also be a matter of secondary obligation of State responsibility, as the ICJ identified education as a form of satisfaction.166
In conclusions, all these obligations would contribute to protect the indivisibility of human rights, which traditionally holds that civil, political, and socioeconomic rights are mutually constitutive and have the same status and should be extended to include the protection of future generations and nature, in recognizing “human nourishing in a thriving web of life.”167 Moving away from the logic of sacrifice underpinning the fossil fuel-based economy, would go even further in recognising that the human rights of one and other members of society and of life-supporting systems across time and across generations, are interconnected and inter-dependent. And that inter-dependence is the primary object of protection as the basis for economies and societies of care.
Notes
[1] International Court of Justice (‘ICJ’), Advisory Opinion on the obligations of States in respect of Climate Change (2025).
[2] Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Advisory Opinion on The Climate Emergency and Human Rights No 32 (2025).
[3] International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (‘ITLOS’), Advisory Opinion on Climate Change and International Law No 31 (2024).
[4] Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Advisory Opinion No 31 (2025), and separate Opinion by Judge Gomez.
[6] E Morgera, “The stringent due diligence obligations to protect the planet’s life-supporting systems by phasing out fossil fuels: drawing on the full range of applicable sources of international law” in D Boyd et al (eds), Past and Future Legal Strategies: The ICJ Advisory Opinion on Climate Change (Hart, forth).
[11] Convention to Combat Desertification in Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, Particularly in Africa, 14 October 1994, 1954 UNTS 3.
[19] E Morgera, Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change, ‘The imperative of defossilizing our economies’ (2025) UN Doc A/HRC/59/42.
[20] E Morgera, G Hamley and M Lennan, ‘Climate Change and Biodiversity’ in Perron-Welch, Cabrera Medaglia and Goodman (eds), Legal Aspects of Implementing the Convention on Biological Diversity (CUP, forth); E Morgera and M Lennan, ‘Ensuring Mutual Supportiveness of the Paris Agreement with other Multilateral Environmental Agreements: A Focus on Ocean-Based Climate Action’ in Zahar (ed), Research Handbook on the Law of the Paris Agreement (Edward Elgar, 2024).
[21] UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, ‘Impacts of climate change and climate finance on Indigenous Peoples’ rights’ (2017) UN Doc A/HRC/36/46.
[22] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report, 101.
[26] UNEP, Emissions Gap Report (2024, 3).
[27] IPCC, Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report, 42.
[28] International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook 2024.
[29] IPCC, Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report, 58.
[30] E Morgera, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change – Scene-setting report (intersectionality) UN Doc A/HRC/56/46 (2024).
[31] Report of the Special Rapporteur on the issue of human rights obligations relating to the enjoyment of a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment: The right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment: non-toxic environment A/HRC/49/53 (2022); and Annex I “Additional sacrifice zones”: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/2022-03/Annex1_to_A_HRC_49_53.pdf.
[32] Global Climate and Health Alliance, ‘Cradle to Grave: The Health Toll of Fossil Fuels and the Imperative for a Just Transition’ (2nd edn) (2025) (GCHA), 27, 18; Khatri et al, ‘Associations of Air Pollution and Paediatric Asthma in Cleveland, Ohio’ (2021) Scientific World Journal; Komisarow & Pakhtigian, ‘The Effect of Coal-Fired Power Plant Closures on Emergency Department Visits for Asthma-Related Conditions Among 0-to-5-Year-Old Children in Chicago, 2009–2017’ (2021) 111 American Journal of Public Health; Newman et al, ‘Traffic-related Air Pollution and Asthma Hospital Readmission in Children: a Longitudinal Cohort Study’ (2014) 164 The Journal of Paediatrics.
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[34] Trasande et al., ‘Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons, Brachial Artery Distensibility and Blood Pressure among Children Residing near an Oil Refinery’ (2015) 136 Environ Res 133.
[36] T Woodruff, ‘Health Effects of Fossil Fuel-Derive Endocrine Disruptors’ (2024) 390 New England Journal of Medicine; J Rumph et al, ‘Uncovering Evidence: Associations between Environmental Contaminants and Disparities in Women’s Health’ (2022) 19 Int J Environ Res Public Health 1257.
[37] E Morgera, ‘Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change – Country Visit to Vanuatu’ (2025) UN Doc A/HRC/59/42/Add.1.
[38] UNICEF, Children’s Climate Risk Report (2026).
[40] Amnesty International, Extraction Extinction: Why the lifecycle of fossil fuels threatens life, nature, and human rights (2025).
[41] Health Effects Institute, State of Global Air 2024; and J Lelieveld et al., ‘Air pollution deaths attributable to fossil fuels: observational and modelling study’ (2023) BMJ.
[42] UN Special Rapporteur on the implications for human rights of the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes, Marcos Orellana, ‘Shipping, toxics and human rights’ (2023) UN Doc A/78/169.
[43] National Research Council, Oil in the Sea III: Inputs, Fates, and Effects 212 (2003); Petrochemical, Chemical, & Energy Industry News, Philippines survivors forced from homes due to oil spills (2025).
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[46] World Bank, The Impact of Gas Flaring on Child Health in Nigeria (2022).
[47] UN, Second World Ocean Assessment (2021), II, 42.
[48] Caserta, ‘Heavy metals and placental fetal-maternal barrier: a mini-review on the major concerns’ (2024) 17 European Review for Medical & Pharmaceutical Sciences.
[49] UNEP, What is Nitrogen Pollution? (2025).
[50] OSPAR Commission, Produced Water Discharges from Offshore Oil and Gas Installations 2009–2019, OSPAR’S Offshore Industry Committee: Fact Sheet 2022.
[51] Gas Exporting Countries Forum, Global Gas Outlook 2050 (2024), 96.
[52] International Cryosphere Climate Initiative, State of the Cryosphere Report 2024.
[54] C Dagget, ‘Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire’ (2018) 47 Millennium: Journal of International Studies.
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[56] T Verbeek & A Mah, ‘Integration and Isolation in the Global Petrochemical Industry: A Multiscalar Corporate Network Analysis’ (2020) 96 Economic Geography 363.
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[58] J Taggart et al., ‘The battle for plastic hegemony: the petrochemical historical bloc and the UN Global Plastics Treaty’ (2024) Review of International Political Economy.
[59] See https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/29/how-the-fossil-fuel-industry-is-pushing-plastics-on-the-world-.html.
[61] J Rockstrom et al, The EAT – Lancet Commission on healthy, sustainable, and just food systems (2025) 406 The Lancet.
[63] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Assessment of Agricultural Plastics and Their Sustainability: A Call for Action (2021).
[64] UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Interim report (2015) UN Doc A/70/287; and Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, ‘Measures for minimizing the adverse impact of climate change on the full realization of the right to food’ (2024) UN Doc A/HRC/55/37.
[65] The Global Syndemic of Obesity, Undernutrition, and Climate Change: The Lancet Commission report (2019).
[67] R Ralston et al, Ultra-processed foods are a key driver of the global plastics pollution crisis’ (2026) 7 Nature Food 309.
[68] N Gaber et al, ‘The Devil they Knew: Chemical Documents Analysis of Industry Influence on PFAS Science’ (2023) 89 Annals of Global Health 37.
[69] A Kaurov and N Oreskes, ‘The afterlife of a ghost-written paper: How corporate authorship shaped two decades of glyphosate safety discourse’ (2025) 171 Environmental Science & Policy 104160.
[70] K Grob et al, ‘Food Contamination with Organic Materials in Perspective: Packaging Materials as the Largest and Least Controlled Source? A View Focusing on the European Situation’ (2006) 46 Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition 529.
[72] UNEP, From Pollution to Solution – A Global Assessment of Marine Litter and Plastic Pollution (2021).
[74] Ibid; Balbus et al, ‘Implications of Global Climate Change for the Assessment and Management of Human Health Risks of Chemicals in the Natural Environment’ (2013) 32 Environmental Toxicology & Chemicals 62.
[76] Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the implications for human rights of the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes, Marcos Orellana, ‘Gender and hazardous substances’ (2024) UN Doc A/79/163.
[77] Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the implications for human rights of the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes, Marcos Orellana, ‘The stages of the plastics cycle and their impacts on human rights’ (2021) UN Doc A/76/207.
[78] S Gündoğdu, Plastic Waste Trade: A New Colonialist Means of Pollution Transfer (2024).
[79] M Kozlov, “Your brain is full of microplastics: are they harming you?”, 11 February 2025.
[81] Ibid; UNEP, Chemicals in Plastic – Summary and Key Findings (2023).
[83] M Wagner et al, ‘State of the science on plastic chemicals – Identifying and addressing chemicals and polymers of concern’ (2024), https://zenodo.org/records/10701706.
[84] C Symeonides et al, ‘An Umbrella Review of Meta-Analyses Evaluating Associations between Human Health and Exposure to Major Classes of Plastic-Associated Chemicals’ (2024) 90 Annals of Global Health.
[85] EFSA Panel on Food Contact Materials, ‘Enzymes and Processing Aids et al, Re-evaluation of the risks to public health related to the presence of bisphenol A (BPA) in foodstuffs’ (2023) 21 EFSA Journal 392.
[86] P Landrigan et al, ‘The Minderoo-Monaco Commission on Plastics and Human Health’ (2023) 89 Annals of Global Health.
[87] W Steffen et al, ‘Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet’ (2015) Science 347(6223).
[88] L Monclús et al, ‘Mapping the chemical complexity of plastics’ 92025) 643 Nature 349.
[91] Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, ‘Measures for minimizing the adverse impact of climate change on the full realization of the right to food’ (2024) UN Doc A/HRC/55/37.
[92] Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food to the Human Rights Council, ‘Effects of pesticides on the right to food’ (2017) UN Doc A/HRC/34/48.
[95] PAN International, Cultivating Coherent Climate Action: Why agroecology and pesticides reforms should underpin action on agriculture and food systems in support of the Paris Agreement (2024). https://www.pan-uk.org/site/wp-content/uploads/Cultivating-Coherent-Climate-Action.pdf.
[96] PAN International, Pesticides and the Climate Crisis (2023), https://issuu.com/pan-uk/docs/pesticides_and_the_climate_crisis?fr=xKAE9_____w.
[98] Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, ‘Seeds, right to life and farmers’ rights’ (2021) UN Doc A/HRC/49/43 and Report of the UN Working Group on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas, ‘Rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas’ (2025) UN Doc A/HRC/60/33.
[99] ‘Venezuela: Accountability and democracy cannot be built on violations of international law, warn UN experts’ (2026), https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/01/venezuela-accountability-and-democracy-cannot-be-built-violations; ‘Iran peace deal must not come at the cost of human rights, warn UN experts’ (2026), https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/06/iran-peace-deal-must-not-come-cost-human-rights-warn-un-experts. See also Open Letter to Delegations at the First International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels Santa Marta, Colombia, 28–29 April 2026: the direct and documented role of fossil fuels in sustaining military operations, illegal occupation, and genocide.
[100] GCHA, Climate Change, Armed Conflict, and Global Public Health: A Reinforcing Cycle of Harm (2026).
[101] Chase LaSpisa, ‘Dangerous development: the effect of offshore fossil-fuel discovery and production on maritime diplomatic conflict’ (2025) 51 International Interactions 29.
[102] Priestley, ‘The peacebuilding implications of energy transitions to a carbon-neutral future’ (Geneva, Quaker United Nations Office, 2020).
[103] Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, ‘Conflict and the right to food’ (2023) UN Doc A/HRC/52/40.
[104] Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the implications for human rights of the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes, Marcos Orellana, ‘Military activities and toxics’ (2025) UN Doc A/80/174.
[105] M Wewerinke-Singh, ‘Harmonizing Sources, Hardening Duties: Inside the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion on Climate Change’ in MA Tigre et al (eds), The ICJ’s Advisory Opinion on Climate Change (Verfassungsbooks, 2025) 57.
[106] J Skovgaard et al., ‘Finance for fossils – the role of public financing in expanding petrochemicals’ (2023) 80 Global Environmental Change.
[107] Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the issue of human rights obligations relating to the enjoyment of a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment, David Boyd, ‘Business, planetary boundaries, and the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment’ (2024) UN Doc A/HRC/55/43.
[108] Report of the UN Independent Expert on the effects of foreign debt and other related international financial obligations of States on the full enjoyment of all human rights, particularly economic, social and cultural rights, Attiya Waris, ‘Understanding the landscape of climate finance, debt, tax and illicit financial flows and human rights’ (2025) UN Doc A/HRC/58/51.
[109] International Monetary Fund, Fossil Fuel Subsidies Data: 2023 Update.
[110] E Morgera, Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change, ‘Transforming food systems for a safe climate and health for all’ (2026) UN Doc A/HRC/62/44.
[111] OECD, Distribution of Support and Income in Agriculture (2011).
[112] FAO, A Multi-Billion-Dollar Opportunity: Repurposing agricultural support to transform food systems (2021), https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/05983446-7ad7-4ea5-9257-fda5e186467f/content.
[113] S Switzer, E Morgera and E Webster, ‘Casting the net wider? The transformative potential of integrating human rights into the implementation of the WTO Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies’ (2022) 31 RECIEL 360.
[116] OECD, Base erosion and profit shifting: https://www.oecd.org/en/topics/policy-issues/base-erosion-and-profit-shifting-beps.html.
[117] F Mager and A Schultz, How “greenlaundering” conceals the full scale of fossil fuel financing (2024), https://taxjustice.net/reports/climate-betrayal-how-greenlaundering-conceals-the-full-scale-of-fossil-fuel-financing/.
[119] UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Statement on Tax Policy and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, (2025) UN Doc E/C.12/2025/1.
[120] Lee Di Salvatore et al., “Investor–State dispute settlements: a hidden handbrake on climate action” (IIED, 2023), https://www.iied.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/2023-11/21971iied.pdf.
[121] K Tienhaara and L Cotula, Raising the cost of climate action? Investor-state dispute settlement and compensation for stranded fossil fuel assets (IIED, 2020).
[122] Report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the relationship between climate change and human rights (2009) UN Doc A/HRC/10/61.
[124] UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, ‘Enforced disappearance in the context of the defence of land, natural resources and environment’ (2025) UN Doc A/HRC/60/35/Add.4; Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor, ‘Tipping points: human rights defenders, climate change and a just transition’ (2025) UN Doc A/80/114.
[125] IPBES, Transformative Change Assessment Report (2024).
[127] A Skelton, ‘Child rights jurisprudence without borders: Developments in extraterritorial jurisdiction’ (2023) 56 De Jure Law Journal.
[129] CRC, General Comment No 26 on Children Rights and a Healthy Environment, with a focus on Climate Change (2024) UN Doc CRC/C/GC/26. See also Separate Opinion by ICJ Judge Charlesworth para 29.
[130] CEDAW, General recommendation No.37 (2018) on gender-related dimensions of disaster risk reduction in a changing climate UN Doc CEDAW/C/GC/37.
[131] CEDAW, Concluding observations on the ninth periodic report of Spain UN Doc CEDAW/C/ESP/CO/9 (2023); Concluding observations on the combined seventh to tenth periodic reports of Nicaragua UN Doc CEDAW/C/NIC/CO/7-10 (2024) and Concluding observations on the third periodic report of Yemen UN Doc E/C.12/YEM/CO/3 (2023).
[135] The Global Syndemic of Obesity, Undernutrition, and Climate Change: The Lancet Commission report (2019), https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2818%2932822-8/fulltext.
[136] Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, Astrid Puentes Riaño, ‘Priority actions towards breathing clean air, protecting public health and ensuring a healthy environment’ (2026) UN Doc A/HRC/61/47.
[137] S Nhabinde and A Heshmati, The extractive industry’s impact on economic growth in SADC countries (2020).
[138] Report of the UN Independent Expert on human rights and international solidarity, ‘Peace and international solidarity’ (2026) UN Doc A/HRC/62/38.
[140] CESCR, General comment No. 27 (2025) on economic, social and cultural rights and the environmental dimension of sustainable development UN Doc E/C.12/GC/27; Morgera (n 111).
[141] T Lenton et al (eds), 2025, The Global Tipping Points Report 2025. University of Exeter, https://global-tipping-points.org/download/1418/.
[142] E Morgera, ‘The role of human rights in transforming economies’ in P Kuenkel (ed), Transforming Economies – Towards Regenerative Civilizations (Springer, 2026).
[148] IPBES Transformative Change Assessment (2024).
[149] Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Olivier De Schutter, ‘Eradicating poverty beyond growth’ (2024) UN Doc A/HRC/56/61.
[150] Also drawing on Reports of the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, Pedro Arrojo Agudo, ‘Fulfilling the human rights of those living in poverty and restoring the health of aquatic ecosystems: two converging challenges’ (2023) UN Doc A/HRC/54/32 and ‘The water/food nexus: a human rights perspective’ (2025) UN Doc A/79/190.
[151] Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, Thematic assessment report on the interlinkages among biodiversity, water, food and health (nexus assessment) (2024).
[153] G Basson et al., ‘Commentary to the Maastricht Principles on the Human Rights of Future Generations’ (2025) 47 Human Rights Quarterly 754.
[154] N Peleg, ‘Reconceptualising the child’s right to development: children and the capability approach’ (2013) The International Journal of Children’s Rights.
[156] M Petersmann, “Re-paring ecologies of harm: resisting the material and legal infrastructures in ‘Cancer Alley’”, London School of Economics Law School, LSE Legal Studies working paper No. 11/2025.
[157] Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, (2020) UN Doc A/HRC/44/48, and Morgera (n 30).
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