The mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change was established by the UN Human Rights Council in October 2021. The Special Rapporteur is tasked to study and identify “how the adverse effects of climate change affect the full and effective enjoyment of human rights”. And to contribute to raising awareness on the human rights affected by climate change. Elisa Morgera is the current Special Rapporteur. Professor of International Law at Durham University, she holds a Law degree from the University of Trieste, Italy; a Master of Laws in Environmental Law from University College London; a Master of Research and a PhD in International Law from the European University Institute, Italy. From 2013 to 2016, she led an £800K research programme (BENELEX) to see how international law could be used to ensure that the benefits of moving to a green economy could be shared fairly.
Ms Morgera, according to many observers, COP30 on climate change failed to achieve any significant results. The same applies to the preparatory work for a global plastics treaty. In your opinion, what is the state of environmental multilateralism (and multilateralism tout court)? Is unanimity a strength of United Nations multilateralism or a weapon in the hands of those who want to preserve the status quo?
Multilateralism is essential to address effectively and equitably the inter-twined planetary crises we are facing – climate change, biodiversity loss, toxic pollution and economic inequality. But a trend has emerged to block consensus in multiple relevant fora, particularly when the international community has attempted to name fossil fuels as the root cause of these inter-twined planetary crisis on the basis of best available science – under the Human Rights Council, in the UN plastics treaty negotiations, and at the Climate COP30. In all these cases, there seems to be a repeated pattern of bad-faith engagement with the process of building consensus by a very small but powerful minority of States. This trend is even more worrying in the face of the international law clarifications on States’ obligations on climate change, including on fossil fuels, from the three Advisory Opinions of international tribunals that were issued in 2024-2025 (International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) – Advisory Opinion, 21 May 2024; Inter-American Court of Human Rights- IACtHR – Advisory Opinion OC-32/25, 3 July 2025; International Court of Justice-ICJ – “Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change”, 23 July 2025, Ed.).
In this context, I would recommend two things. First, it may be helpful to explore majority-voting multilateralism to ensure more transparency in current inter-State dynamics and advance action on which a vast majority of States are willing to move forward. Second, we should explore alternative forms of multilateralism, such as the Santa Marta Conference on phasing out fossil fuels co-led by Colombia and the Netherlands, and pilot more inclusive forms of multilateralism that ensure that State representatives listen to the voices of those most affected by climate change, scientists, the medical community, children and others with a view to finding solutions that can respond to the needs experienced on the ground and aligned with multiple areas of science and knowledge (climate, nature, water, food, health). These pilots can then be fed back into existing multilateral spaces to advance with concrete examples the proposals for reform of the Climate COP and other UN spaces.
Some argue that there can be no climate justice without fiscal justice. Can fairer taxation at national and global level be a tool for managing the climate crisis?
Taxation is a critical component of climate mitigation, and in particular the human rights imperative of defossilizing our economies, as well as for climate finance. In my report to the Human Rights Council in June of this year, I have clarified that fossil fuel companies have benefited from substantial profits, sizeable subsidies, tax avoidance and undue protection under international investment law, without reducing energy poverty and economic inequalities. I have underscored that tax evasion and financial secrecy further help fossil fuel expansion, taking even more funding away from adaptation and responses to loss and damage. As documented by the OECD, 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. In addition, the studies by Tax Justice Network indicated that 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. Financial secrecy also makes it difficult to monitor the accuracy of banks’ sustainability reporting on divesting from fossil fuels. In 2023, private sector banks provided $696 billion in financing to fossil fuel companies. Ultimately, 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 everyone’s economic, social and cultural rights, and the right to a healthy environment.
For these reasons, it is essential that climate justice experts engage in the negotiations of the United Nations framework convention on international tax cooperation. I have recommended that States should agree:
- To prevent and combat illicit financial flows, corruption, money-laundering, tax evasion and tax avoidance that benefit fossil fuel companies;
- To enhance transparency on fossil fuel financing;
- To ensure redistribution of tax revenue towards climate finance and remedies for loss and damage.
The last point is crucial as many developed States often say that there is no public budget for climate finance, and tax reform can really make a huge difference here (together with other reforms of fossil fuel subsidies).
The climate crisis is not democratic: neither in terms of its causes (the richer, whether individuals or countries, bear greater responsibility) nor in terms of its consequences (which hit the most vulnerable hardest, whether individuals or countries). And it might exacerbate social inequalities. The green transition itself (i.e. the notorious case of the French “yellow vests”) can be ‘regressive’, harming the most vulnerable instead of protecting them. How can climate justice and social justice go hand in hand?
I dedicated my report to the UN General Assembly to this very topic this year. In reality, what we are witnessing is a replication of the same injustices that brought us climate change into the development of renewables. But climate justice and social justice can and must go hand together: we know very well these patterns of human rights violations, so we have all the tools to prevent them. The energy transition should not replicate the same economic models and assumptions that underpin the fossil fuel-based economy, and favour the same actors that are linked to the fossil fuel-based economy – these actors prioritize large-scale solutions that harm nature, water, food and human health, with disproportionate impacts on workers, women, children, Indigenous peoples, as well as small-scale farmers and fishers. So, we need to move away from renewables projects led by economic actors that have a track record of human rights violations, or projects that are still linked to fossil fuels, such as coal-fired power plants for processing or recycling energy transition minerals or reliance on plastics for renewable energy equipment and electric vehicles. Another key point, States are creating a breeding ground for socially unjust (and in fact also environmentally ineffective) renewables projects by “cutting red tape” and “accelerating” permitting processes: renewables are increasingly exempted from, or subjected to lighter, requirements of prior assessment, public information and participation, consent and planning. Instead, these legal requirements are essential because we do have available science to select necessary measures to minimize negative environmental and social impacts of renewables, and develop renewables-based economies that support a safe climate, nature, water, food and health.
And there is a deeper reflection here: we need our governments to focus on healthier systemic changes for ourselves and the planet. Rather than more electric vehicles, we need better public transport that is also a major contribution to our physical and mental health and to the environment, for instance.
Climate litigations are increasing, involving individual citizens, associations and states. Could this be a way to demand that those responsible pay for the losses and damages caused by their activities?
Climate litigation has certainly been a powerful source of truth-telling on climate injustices, particularly for children, young people, older people and civil society who are taking so many risks to reveal that climate injustices are also what explains the reasons for climate inaction by our governments. In addition, climate litigation has been and will continue to be a powerful source of social and legal change. We will certainly see more climate litigation at all levels thanks to the three Advisory Opinions of the international tribunals on State obligations on climate change, and a fourth is being prepared by the African Court of Human Rights (see the Request for an advisory opinion on the human rights obligations of African states in addressing the climate crisis, Ed.). All these Advisory Opinions are coherent in clarifying that States must take effective climate action, to their highest possible levels of ambition, and effectively protect our human rights and nature in the context of climate change. This is a legally binding obligation and there are international law consequences for lack of compliance, including in the light of the human right to effective remedies from harm.
In addition, it’s important to focus on the climate action taken at city and provincial level, as well as people-led action. The science on transformative change is clear that system changes do not happen from the top down, but need efforts and innovations from the bottom up, including to phase out fossil fuels. So we need to learn from these local initiatives and connect them, including as a basis for then decisions at national and international levels.
You wrote against advertisements promoting fossil fuels and good and services with hi impact on the climate. Some argue that it is excessive to target commercials and billboards as well. Why are they wrong?
COP30 has elevated the urgent need to address climate disinformation, including through fossil fuel advertising and sponsorship, as a crucial element of our efforts to mitigate climate change. In my report I emphasized that the fossil fuel sector has been hiding, denying and disinforming the public more than 60 years about their role in causing climate change and keeping us trapped in the current climate crisis. They have used evolving strategies that are similar to those used by the tobacco industry (“the playbook”). This disinformation in itself is a form of human rights harm – our human right to information, to science and to education and ultimately our democracies are deeply undermined by these practices, as it has been recognised also by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in its historic Advisory Opinion on the Climate Emergency. Concretely, these activities of denialism and climate obstruction have undermined the protection of all human rights that are negatively impacted by climate change and are a huge obstacle today to make meaningful progress on climate action nationally and internationally.
Instead of being partners in climate action, fossil fuel companies are intimidating and attacking independent climate scientists and environmental human rights defenders, including judicial harassment tactics, to silence, intimidate or punish their critics. Meanwhile, fossil fuel companies are making profits with PR and advertising companies and big tech, spreading climate disinformation on social media platforms by means of advertisements, including advertisements generated by artificial intelligence. Through advertisements and major sponsorships, fossil fuels have for decades shaped public perceptions by downplaying human rights impacts and emphasizing the role of fossil fuel products in economic growth and modern life.
Bans on fossil fuel advertising can serve to challenge the taken-for-granted presence of fossil fuel products in our lives, and create space instead for all of us to focus on the negative economic and health impacts of fossil fuels on all of us in all their forms (including plastics and petro-chemicals in our bodies and in our food systems).
The US has a “war ministry”. Europe, which in the last legislative term legislated to be more environmentally sustainable, is now rearming. Is this militarism justified? Will it further reduce the already insufficient progress towards sustainable development goals?
There are very clear links between armed conflict, militarization and the worsening of climate change and climate injustices. In turn, armed conflicts cause severe damage to renewable energy production facilities, while causing significant greenhouse gas emissions – estimated to be at least 5.5 per cent of global emissions that are not even monitored under the Paris Agreement. Meanwhile public budgets going to militarization are taking away money that should be used for climate finance. The additional harm to nature, water, food and health arising from armed conflicts also undermines nature’s regulation of the climate system, and undermined human resilience in the context of climate change due to toxic pollution, increased dependence on imported food and strained local economies. This is another layer of harm to the climate system and to human rights.
Ultimately, militarization and armed conflicts are part and parcel of the fossil fuel-based economy, and they contribute directly to climate change while making its impacts even more severe. On the other hand, there are clear links, documented in independent research, on how a genuine and fair transition to a renewables-based economy can support peace and the protection of human rights.
European deregulation
I asked Elisa Morgera about the European Omnibus package, the cuts to the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, and the Directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence. She chose not to answer: “I am not allowed to engage with media on specific country/organizations unless I have had ‘prior engagement’ with them on specific issues”. That said, she told me that I can find many points in her other answers that I could apply to the EU. Indeed, her words on “cutting red tape” and “accelerating” permitting processes fit perfectly with the UE Omnibus package and the procedures from the Commission.
Moreover she told me that I could find information in her report on the energy transition, and in the “Statement by the United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights encouraging the European Union to ensure that any developments relating to the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive are in alignment with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights”.
The “Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises” (also referred to as the Working Group on Business and Human Rights) was established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2011. It “followed with great interest the drafting and adoption of the European Union’s (EU) Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). This was arguably the most important legislative development in the field of business and human rights since the endorsement by the Human Rights Council in 2011 of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs)”, the February 2025 document pointed by Morgera states.
Any developments in the European context “will have implications worldwide and emerging markets are looking to the EU to continue the leadership that it has shown over the past five years”, the Working Group affirms.
In order to conclude that “in light of concerns raised by various stakeholders following the European Commission’s recent Omnibus proposal, reportedly aimed at simplifying human rights due diligence, sustainability reporting and taxonomy […] the Working Group encourages the EU not to reopen the text of the CSDDD”. Yet the Omnibus package and the new provisions on the CSDDD were approved in last December.
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