Concept Note: COP30 Side Event

Organizers: Council of Europe (CoE) & Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB)

Proposed Title: Climate Change and Human Rights

Date & Time: 10 November 2025, 17:00-18:00 local time (60 minutes)

Location: COP30 – joint MDB Pavillon, Belém, Brazil

CoE and CEB response to climate change

Climate change presents unprecedented challenges to human rights, democratic governance, and the rule of law. Climate change impacts disproportionately affect various populations, with vulnerable groups being particularly susceptible to both socioeconomic consequences (e.g., those impacted by decarbonization policies) and physical harms (e.g., those affected by extreme weather events).

Both the CoE and the CEB are actively responding to these challenges and to the calls made upon them through the Reykjavík Declaration, adopted at the 4th CoE Summit in 2024. The Declaration underscored the urgency of additional efforts to protect the environment, as well as to counter the impact of the triple planetary crisis of pollution, climate change, and loss of biodiversity on human rights, democracy and the rule of law, in line with their specific mandates.

As a response to the Reykjavík Declaration:

• The CoE has integrated environmental protection into its core mission through its Strategy on the Environment (2025), reaffirming the Organisation’s commitment to promote a human rights-based approach to environmental crises. Morover, CoE’s unique set of legal standards, monitoring bodies, and cooperative frameworks provides a pathway for its 46 member States to strengthen environmental governance, ensure judicial accountability, and fully safeguard the human rights of those most affected by climate change.
• The CEB, as a Multilateral Development Bank with a unique social mandate, has integrated climate action as a cross-cutting theme in its Strategic Framework 2023–2027, informing all of the Bank’s activities alongside gender equality and the digital transition. As part of this approach, it applies a “climate–social nexus” lens to social investments, focusing on opportunities that simultaneously advance social cohesion and climate-related objectives, while ensuring alignment with the Paris Agreement and recognizing the Just Transition as a key enabler of effective and inclusive climate action.

The Event

This COP30 side event will explore the intersection between climate action, human rights, and development finance, moving from the intrinsic link to tangible solutions and finance.

1. The indivisible link: Climate change and human rights

Climate impacts undermine fundamental rights, including the right to life, and access to health, food, water, energy and housing. We will highlight disproportionate impacts on vulnerable groups demonstrating the intersectionality with human rights principles of non-discrimination. Practical examples will illustrate the link and propose solutions.

2. A Human Rights focus for policy and implementation

A human rights focus helps to evaluate the social impacts of policies, specifically preventing "maladaptation" or unintended negative consequences. For example, a focus on access electricity becomes a powerful lever for introducing decentralized renewable energy solutions, ensuring that climate action simultaneously addresses energy poverty and inequality. This approach will also challenge financiers of the low carbon and climate resilient transition to adopt a proactive Human Rights focus.

In a panel discussion, we will address key challenges related to the implementation of climate policies and human rights protection. The conversation will delve into critical topics, such as:

• The Crucial Role of Climate Information: Exploring how accessible, timely, and relevant climate information can be leveraged to support informed public participation and empower communities to effectively adapt to climate change.
• Advancing Just Transition Principles and Finance: Examining the importance of Just Transition principles in the context of human rights, outlining strategies for financing a just transition, and defining the specific role of public development banks in this effort.

Format and Participants

Format: Panel Discussion (60 minutes), English, including short video displays.

Moderator: tbd

Keynote Interventions: 3-4 speakers (tbd)

• Council of Europe (Representative of the Secretary General or relevant Directorate)
• Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB) (Representative of the Directorate for Technical Assessment and Monitoring)
• UN Special Rapporteur on environment and human rights or the one on climate change
• Representative CIEL or Youth Environment Europe

Target Public: Governments, Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), Civil Society Organizations, Academia, and the General Public.

Summary text

Climate change and human rights

The Council of Europe (CoE) and the Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB) are hosting a COP30 side event to explore the intersection of climate action, human rights, and development finance.

Climate change poses fundamental threats to human rights, disproportionately affecting vulnerable groups. The event will first establish this indivisible link, showing how climate impacts undermine rights to life, and access to food, water, energy, health services, and housing.

The core focus is on tangible solutions through a Human Rights focus for the implementation of climate policies. Applying this focus helps evaluate policy social impacts, prevent "maladaptation," and ensures climate action, like introducing decentralized renewable energy, simultaneously addresses inequality. This approach also challenges financiers to adopt a proactive human rights focus and to finance a just transition.