Climate change is a human rights crisis. Its impact is being felt across India and the rest of South Asia, as in every region of the world.

If governments still need convincing, they should turn to the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, published this year, which makes the link crystal clear.

Changes in the atmosphere, ocean and biosphere caused by anthropogenic emissions are undermining the protection and realization of human rights for people across the globe.

In South Asia, this means heat stress and extreme weather, including flooding and storms. 

The right to food is impacted, the right to life, to clean drinking water, to health, housing, development and a sustainable environment, with all this playing out on a massive scale and the rights of those already most discriminated against in society at greatest at risk.

It has been five and a half years since I was appointed Special Rapporteur. I have spent them speaking with human rights defenders around the world, joining them in person and in online calls, hearing from activists and governments, victims of human rights violations and those trying to prevent them. My mandate is to monitor the implementation of the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders by States. Article 1: everyone has the right to promote and strive for the protection and realization of human rights. Article 12: everyone has the right to participate in peaceful activities against violations of human rights. 

People have the right to defend human rights, including human rights threatened by climate change. 

They have a right to raise their voices and peacefully protest against new energy projects that would damage the environment and undermine the rights of indigenous communities, as has been happening with the Siang River hydropower dam.

They have a right to organise protests demanding action on climate change and an end to false solutions. If we believe in the universality of human rights, it’s what we must do.

There will be no ‘just transition’ if the current extractive model of energy production is copied onto the shift from fossil fuels. A transition that does not respect, protect and preserve the possible realisation of all human rights for all cannot be a just one.

In South Asia and elsewhere, human rights defenders have been speaking out on these vital points. They have been organising and advocating with their governments – who have duties under international law to protect human rights and act on the climate crisis – and protesting and turning to courts when they are ignored. 

This is the kind of work I document in my latest report to the UN General Assembly. It is the kind of work I am calling on governments in South Asia and elsewhere to support. 

People who are peacefully protesting, organising and advocating for action from their governments to address the effects of climate change, as well as their root causes, are human rights defenders. 

Whether they are protesting in city streets or on rural land, denouncing government inaction or implementing solutions, they should benefit from the protection outlined in the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders. That is to say, States should refrain from any form of retaliation against them and ensure that they can carry out their work without fear of reprisal of any sort.

Many governments around the world claim to support human rights defenders. Whether that is true is up for debate. But when it comes to climate activism, there is little evidence to support their claims. Governments should be listening to these human rights defenders, but instead they are smearing them as extremists, criminals or terrorists. They should be protecting them, but instead they are delegitimising their efforts and message, exposing them to threats and physical attacks, and  subjecting them to arbitrary arrest and detention.

Witnessing the effect climate change is already having and reading the scientific reports laying out what will come if action is not taken should frighten us all.

So much could be done if governments worked with human rights defenders. So much energy and time will be wasted – time we do not have – if States continue down the road of dismissal and denigration. It is a road to nowhere.

I am calling for a change in direction. The options left to States in the face of climate change are effective action or widespread destruction. To be effective, action must respect human rights and those defending them, and it must do so across the board. Working with human rights defenders, States could adopt real solutions to reduce emissions; they could build mitigation strategies and resilience from the grassroots level; they could transition to just and sustainable means of energy production that empower people and the realisation of human rights. Who would argue that this is not what needs to be done? It must happen now, before it is too late.

Mary Lawlor is the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders. Lawlor is also adjunct professor at the Centre for Social Innovation, Trinity College Business School and the founder of Front Line Defenders.

The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.