GENEVA (09 November 2026) – UN experts* today said COP31 must draw on all voices and be centred on human rights.
“COP31 is convening against the backdrop of scientific reports confirming that the rise in global temperature is now set to cross the 1.5°C limit, and in a year of Super-El-Niño impacts, all countries need immediate mitigation and adaptation, to minimise harm and ensure accountability and remedy. International cooperation must be proportionate and responsive to the needs of the countries least responsible and most affected by climate change,” the experts said.
Noting growing attacks against multilateralism, the rule of law and the judiciary, the experts underscored that the UN Climate process needs to deliver in accordance with State obligations on climate change and human rights.
“COP31 should extend the work programme on mitigation, centring it on phasing out fossil fuels in all their forms.” The experts noted that the current fuel and food crisis has shown that deffosilising economies is essential for both a safe climate, and for the security and autonomy of States.
“Current geopolitics highlight the lengths to which some States and economic actors are willing to go to protect their vested interests in and profits from the fossil fuel-based economy, regardless of the cost to humanity,” the experts said, pointing to growing social protests.
The experts called upon COP31 to adopt a decision on food systems that recognises their critical role both in driving the climate crisis, and the expansion of fossil fuels. This includes their use as feedstocks for plastics, pesticides and fertilisers – which cause additional layers of harm to the environment, human rights and food security and the fight against poverty. “The decision should support the defossilisation and detoxification of food systems,” they said.
“COP31 should recognise Indigenous Peoples, peasants and women-led agroecology, ecosystem-based small-scale fishing and pastoralism as effective climate solutions,” the experts said. “This will protect human rights to a healthy environment on land and in the ocean, and to health, locally and globally.”
“The International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion and the call by the UN Secretary-General to ensure that polluters pay for climate harm should be considered across the COP agenda,” the experts said.
“This includes carbon markets, as they benefit climate-harming fossil fuel companies and Big Tech,” they said, underscoring global concerns about disinformation and energy, water and mineral resource demand driven by AI and data centres.
“We call on the UN Climate Secretariat, Host Country Türkiye, and Co-Presidency Australia, to ensure meaningful, inclusive participation by Indigenous child, young and all other environmental human rights defenders. This is an essential precondition for substantive progress, which should be reflected also in the Just Transition Mechanism to be adopted in Antalya.”
The experts expressed serious concern about crackdown on civil society in Türkiye and its potential chilling effects. They recalled Türkiye’s commitment to the Human Rights Council to ensure safe civic space at COP31.
“We need tangible progress for the protection of the climate to globalise hope at a time when we most need it.”
*The experts:
- Elisa Morgera, Special Rapporteur on Climate Change
- Astrid Puentes Riaño, Special Rapporteur on the human right to a healthy environment
- Elena Carolina Díaz Galán, Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Bethanie Margaret Carney Almroth, Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights
- Sofía Monsalve Suárez, Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Gina Romero, Special Rapporteur on freedom of peaceful assembly and of association
- Leopoldo Maldonado Gutiérrez, Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression
- Andrea Bolaños Vargas, Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders
- Shalmali Guttal, Working group on right of peasants and other rural workers
