The climate crisis is not only an ecological emergency; it is also a profound human rights crisis that deepens long-standing inequalities. In September 2025, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) adopted general comment No. 27 (GC 27), affirming that a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is essential for the enjoyment of rights under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).
GC 27 is more than a legal milestone. It provides concrete standards that can strengthen climate justice advocacy, especially when read together with emerging jurisprudence from the International Court of Justice and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Combined, these developments form the strongest human rights framework to date for addressing the gendered and intersectional impacts of climate harm.
Gender dimensions of general comment 27
GC 27 recognizes that environmental degradation does not affect all people equally. Women, Indigenous peoples, and gender-diverse people experience disproportionate impacts due to discrimination, exclusion from decision-making, and unequal access to resources. This intersectional framing highlights the idea that environmental injustice is rooted in structural systems of patriarchy, racism, and economic inequality rather than individual vulnerability.
The comment identifies specific gendered harms. Women and girls face higher exposure to pollutants, increased unpaid care work, and unequal access to land and natural resources. Gender-diverse people experience barriers in disaster response and recovery because emergency systems often rely on narrow gender categories. After Typhoon Haiyan, for example, gender-diverse survivors in the Philippines faced discrimination in shelters, aid distribution, and livelihood programmes. Despite these obstacles, they continued to play vital roles in community recovery, demonstrating that Queer justice and climate justice are inseparable.
GC 27 requires states to adopt gender-responsive environmental policies that guarantee participation, nondiscrimination, and equitable access to natural resources. It emphasizes that Indigenous peoples’ knowledge and land rights are central to environmental protection. This reinforces the principle that gender justice cannot be separated from environmental justice.
A growing ecosystem of environmental human rights
GC 27 builds upon an expanding ecosystem of treaty body standards that link environmental protection with equality and nondiscrimination. In 2018, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women addressed gendered dimensions of climate change and insisted on women’s leadership in environmental decision-making. In 2023, the Committee on the Rights of the Child similarly affirmed children’s right to a clean and healthy environment and required states to prevent foreseeable environmental harm. In 2018, the Human Rights Committee also underscored the fact that climate change threatens life itself and obliged states to regulate both public and private actors.
Other bodies, including the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, have highlighted the racialized and disability-specific impacts of environmental degradation. Collectively, these interpretations form a holistic human rights framework integrating civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights. GC 27 strengthens this framework by clarifying the environmental duties of states under the ICESCR, including obligations related to equality, participation, extraterritorial impacts, and corporate accountability.
From principle to practice: Using GC 27 for climate justice and loss and damage
To be transformative, GC 27 must be actively used by courts, civil society, and social movements. Beyond litigation and shadow reporting, the comment provides essential tools for international climate negotiations, especially discussions on loss and damage under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
GC 27 makes it clear that addressing climate losses is not a matter of voluntary assistance. Climate financing, remediation of harm, and measures to support recovery are legal obligations under the ICESCR. States must prevent, reduce, and remedy environmental harm and contribute adequate, predictable resources for reconstruction and long-term resilience. These duties extend extraterritorially, requiring high-emitting and wealthy states to cooperate internationally to address climate impacts beyond their borders. Extraterritorial obligations include diplomatic and negotiating arenas, such as the Conference of the Parties, where decisions about climate mitigation, adaptation, and finance directly affect the rights of communities in other countries. Archipelagic and small island states in the Global South are particularly dependent on these obligations, as they contribute least to emissions yet face existential risks.
When read together with existing treaty standards and a growing body of international law, GC 27 supports the view that loss and damage is fundamentally a human rights obligation. States must integrate gender equality, nondiscrimination, and meaningful participation into all climate finance decisions, including the governance and allocation of the Loss and Damage Fund.
Civil society can invoke GC 27 to demand that climate finance mechanisms include gender-responsive standards, ensure access for grassroots groups, and prioritize those disproportionately affected by climate harm. The comment also supports advocacy for the full participation of women, Indigenous peoples, gender-diverse communities, and persons with disabilities in climate negotiations, ensuring that their voices shape decisions that affect survival, livelihoods, and rights.
Implementation gaps and the threat of regression
Despite its potential, GC 27 faces significant implementation gaps. Climate policies often exclude human rights considerations, climate finance remains unequal, and environmental defenders continue to face threats and criminalization. Corporate accountability is also weak, particularly in transnational supply chains.
Current political pushback makes GC 27 even more urgent. At COP30, a coalition of conservative states attempted to narrow the definition of gender within the UNFCCC process. This threatened to weaken the Gender Action Plan and silence communities most affected by climate harm. GC 27 and related treaty body standards make clear that such regression is inconsistent with human rights obligations. States are required to uphold an inclusive and intersectional understanding of gender in all climate actions.
The next step
General comment 27 offers one of the clearest articulations of the human rights dimensions of climate change. It places gender justice at the center of environmental protection, reinforcing a global consensus that climate inaction violates human rights and requiring that states adopt gender-responsive, intersectional, and participatory approaches to environmental governance.
The next step is implementation. Advocates and grassroots movements can use GC 27 to demand reparations, equitable climate finance, just transition policies, and the full participation of marginalized groups in climate decision-making. The time to hold states accountable and build a more just and sustainable world is now.