Declaration of Ethical Principles in relation to Climate Change

The UNESCO Declaration of Ethical Principles in relation to Climate Change solemnly expresses the concern of UNESCO Member States that climate change could create morally unacceptable damage and injustice.

Some 195 states joined the Declaration on 13 November 2017, in Paris at the 39th session of UNESCO’s General Conference. 

This Declaration sets out a shortlist of the globally-agreed ethical principles that should guide decision-making and policy-making at all levels and help mobilize people to address climate change. Its ethical guidance can complement the other multilateral efforts of States including negotiated commitments under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and scientific assessments organized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Declaration of Ethical Principles in relation to Climate Change
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The Declaration

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Ethical principles

Among other things, the Declaration advocates that “prevention of harm” is one of the important ethical principles in relation to climate change. To comply with it, people should aim to “anticipate, avoid or minimize harm, wherever it might emerge, from climate change, as well as from climate mitigation and adaptation policies and actions.”

Among the other ethical principles, one is exclusively about “scientific knowledge and integrity in decision-making”. It says that “decisions should be based on, and guided by, the best available knowledge from the natural and social sciences”. It adds that states should “take measures which help protect and maintain the independence of science and the integrity of the scientific process”.

Other ethical principles identified are: 

  • solidarity, 
  • sustainability,
  • justice and equity, and 
  • a precautionary approach. 

This Declaration builds on the previous work of UNESCO on the ethical principles in relations to climate change.

Q&A

World leaders have called climate change the biggest challenge of the 21st century. This Declaration speaks to the responsibility to address the challenge, and reinforces ethics at the centre of the discussion.

It sets out six ethical principles:

  • Prevention of harm
  • Precautionary approach
  • Equity and justice
  • Sustainable development
  • Solidarity
  • Scientific knowledge and integrity in decision-making

The text anticipates that agreed principles should be applied through education and international cooperation. Great care has been taken to achieve no duplication, no re-interpretation nor contradiction of international negotiated texts (notably the United Nations Framework Agreement on Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement), which are the source for states’ commitments.

Climate change is fundamentally an ethical issue. If failure to act could have catastrophic implications, responses to climate change that are not thought through carefully, with ethical implications in mind, have the potential to devastate entire communities, create new paradigms of inequity and misdistribution, and render even more vulnerable those who have already found themselves uprooted by other man-made political and ideological struggles.

Secular and religious organizations, including the Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, and other philosophies and faiths, have issued declarations making the moral, ethical, environmental, economic and social case for tackling global warming.

In addition, this declaration is the first global and purely ethical declaration adopted by the United Nations on this topic. As such, it may clarify a set of universal principles that could help us activate international solidarity, and coordinate action across cultures and societies. The UNESCO Declaration is a complementary tool for communicating what is also underpinning the multilateral negotiated instruments.

UNESCO’s work complements work on climate change being done within the United Nations system, for instance by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The aim here is to express the underlying ethical principles.

The emphasis is on making this document a guide, or even a “check-list” to help decision-makers address climate change concerns.

There is a simplicity in the text, with only six memorable ethical principles: (1) prevention of harm; (2) precautionary approach; (3) justice and equity; (4) sustainable development; (5) solidarity; (6) scientific knowledge and integrity in decision-making.

There is some novelty in the text too. Given that it is produced in the heart of UNESCO, it may not be surprising that it asserts that science to inform decision-making should be understood as an ethical principle in relation to climate change.

Likewise, typical of UNESCO, the text anticipates that agreed principles should be applied through education and international cooperation.

Sustainable Development Goal 13 is a plea to “take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts” for which it sets the target “to integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning”.
Adopting this declaration provides guidance to decision-making when actions are considered and taken in relation to climate change: it is necessarily aiming at supporting high quality in these urgent actions.

The World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST), a scientific advisory body at UNESCO, has clarified through its reports that ethics standards should help link climate change action to all the rest of the goals and targets for sustainable development, because there is interlinkage between the SDGs.

Yes, UNESCO believes that agreeing universally on ethical principles in relation to climate change will underpin ambitious voluntary commitments by 195 countries, which adopted the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement to combat the threat of global warming.

The declaration can support each State to scale its commitment accordingly in order to meet the need, in light of shared responsibilities.

A declaration could also be a powerful means to support and advance coordinated joint action, among not only States but also other stakeholders including civil society organizations, academics, and local communities for example. It is thus a means to mobilize and to sensitize people on universal principles and concerns that go beyond the mere technical discourses on climate change.

UNESCO has a leading role globally as a UN Agency with a specialized mandate in the sciences, education, culture and communications. Its constitutional aim is to advance international peace and the common welfare of humankind through strengthening “intellectual and moral solidarity”.

Member States have mandated UNESCO with promoting ethical science: science which shares the benefits of progress for all, protects the planet from ecological collapse and which creates a solid basis for peaceful cooperation.

As early as 2007, it was noted during debates at UNESCO that ethical and social consideration of climate change action required more reflection. Plans for a UNESCO declaration on the ethics of climate change mitigation and adaptation were motivated by a decade of work on climate change by the World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST).

UNESCO has hosted the International Bioethics Committee (IBC) since 1993, and COMEST since 1998. From then, they have been the only global, multidisciplinary and pluralistic fora for bioethics and ethics of science and technology.

UNESCO has a leading role at the United Nations level and globally in the field of bioethics and ethics of science and technology due to UNESCO’s normative instruments – Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights (1997), International Declaration on Human Genetic Data (2003), Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (2005), UNESCO Recommendation on Science and Scientific Researchers (2017) – and its capacity-building programmes to implement those instruments. UNESCO’s normative instruments are, in many cases, the only global instruments available constituting an ethical framework for science and a basis for regional and national legislation in these domains. They have been cited by the European Court of Human Rights and other Regional Supreme Courts on the subjects concerned.

Here are some examples of important Declarations that UNESCO has initiated:

  • Declaration of Principles of International Cultural Co-operation (1966)
  • Declaration on Race and Racial Prejudice (1978)
  • Declaration on Fundamental Principles concerning the Contribution of the Mass Media to Strengthening Peace and International Understanding, to the Promotion of Human Rights and to Countering Racialism, apartheid and incitement to war (1978)
  • Declaration of Principles on Tolerance (1995)
  • Declaration on the Responsibilities of the Present Generations towards Future Generations (1997)
  • Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights (1997)
  • Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity (2001)
  • International Declaration on Human Genetic Data (2003)
  • Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (2005)

World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST)

COMEST is an advisory body and forum of reflection. It is mandated to formulate ethical principles that could provide decision-makers with criteria that extend beyond purely economic considerations.

Plant research
© Budimir Jevtic / Shutterstock.com

More on the Declaration

Evolution of the Declaration

UNESCO’s development of a standard-setting instrument regarding ethical principles in relation to climate change has been proposed on several occasions, notably by the World Commission on Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST).

 

Timeline of its preparation

38th session of the UNESCO General Conference, November 2015 (UNESCO headquarters, Paris, France)

  • The 195 Member States of UNESCO decided by consensus that it was desirable that the ethics of climate change should be addressed by a declaration.

  • The General Conference invited the Director-General “to prepare … a preliminary text of a non-binding declaration on ethical principles in relation to climate change” that should be submitted to its 39th session in 2017.

    Read 38 C/Resolution 42, found in the records of the 38th General Conference: Arabic / Chinese / English / French / Russian / Spanish

199th session of the UNESCO Executive Board, May 2016 (UNESCO headquarters, Paris, France)

First Draft is prepared by an Ad Hoc Expert Group on 24 September 2016 (Rabat, Kingdom of Morocco)

Consultations with 195 Member States by written procedure, 17 October 2016 – 1 February 2017

  • Inclusive consultations with all UNESCO Member States are pursued by written procedure.
  • 36 Member States respond with comments.

  • In April 2017, the AHEG prepared a revised draft that takes into account the comments of Member States received in these consultations.

    Consult the circular letter that launched the Member States’ consultations: English / French

    Download the AHEG’s revised draft after these first consultations with states: Arabic / Chinese / English / French / Russian / Spanish

An Intergovernmental Meeting, 27-30 June 2017 (UNESCO headquarters, Paris France)

  • All 195 Member States of UNESCO and states that are Associate Members, as well as a long list of invited observers, meet in an intergovernmental meeting, in order to deepen inclusive consultations (as decided in 199 EX/Decision 5.I.B).

    This intergovernmental meeting prepares a preliminary text of a new declaration of ethical principles in relation to climate change, for its submission to the 39th UNESCO General Conference.

    More information on the meeting and documents

202nd session of the UNESCO Executive Board, 4-18 October 2017 (UNESCO headquarters, Paris, France)

  • 58 Member States examine the preliminary text, and adopt a recommendation on it addressed to the General Conference.

 

Declaration adopted

The declaration is adopted by UNESCO's General Conference at its 39th session, on 13 November 2017.

First Step towards a preliminary text

At the invitation of the Government of the Kingdom of Morocco, the first meeting of the Ad Hoc Expert Group (AHEG) was held at the Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco in Rabat from 20 to 24 September 2016.

This meeting was hosted by the Moroccan National Commission for UNESCO, in accordance with the host country agreement which was signed at the official ceremony organized at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris on 1 September 2016.

During this meeting, the AHEG was tasked with preparing a first draft of a preliminary text of a declaration on ethical principles in relation to climate change.

The outcome of the AHEG’s work will be sent to Member States for comments after the meeting.

Documents

Meeting documents

Working document

Previous work on Ethical principles in relation to climate change

Building on the recommendation of COMEST, the 35th General Conference, in October 2009, requested the Director-General to report on the desirability of preparing a draft declaration of ethical principles in relation to climate change (35 C/Resolution 36). An extensive study on the subject was conducted in 2010, with the active involvement of COMEST, whose Report on “The Ethical Implications of Global Climate Change” was published as a book.

The report of the Director-General was submitted to the Executive Board in October 2010 (Document 185 EX/13). The Board judged that it was not appropriate, at that point, to start work towards the drafting of such a declaration, and requested a follow-up report, taking account inter alia of the outcomes of the 16th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP-16, Cancun, November-December 2010; Document 185 EX/Decision 13).

The follow-up report was submitted to the Board in May 2011 (186 EX/Decision 9). Noting the new information presented, the Board confirmed its view that a declaration would not be appropriate, a view subsequently noted and endorsed  by the General Conference in November 2011 (Resolution 36 C/Res. 36).

In parallel with consideration by the UNESCO governing bodies, COMEST continued its own substantive work, and adopted at its 7th Ordinary Session (Doha, Qatar, October 2011) a Framework of Ethical Principles and Responsibilities for Climate Change Adaptation.

In a decision adopted by its Extraordinary Session in July 2012 in Paris, COMEST proposed  that this framework might further be extended in due to cover other aspects of ethical principles in relation to climate change.

Considering the issue in light of new circumstances in October 2012, the UNESCO Executive Board endorsed the proposal by COMEST to pursue background technical work on ethical principles in relation to climate change (190 EX/Decision 10).

At its 8th Ordinary Session (Bratislava, Republic of Slovakia, May 2013), COMEST adopted its report on “Background for a Framework of Ethical Principles and Responsibilities for Climate Change Adaptation”, which provides a detailed justification of its 2011 ethical framework for climate adaptation, and an action plan for the preparation of its comprehensive report on a framework of ethical principles for climate change to be ready for the adoption at the 9th Ordinary Session of COMEST in 2015. This action plan was revised in 2014, when COMEST prepared and discussed, at its Extraordinary Session (Quebec, Canada, October 2014), a consolidated draft of its report on “Ethical Principles for Climate Change: Adaptation and Mitigation”.

The Executive Board considered the issue of desirability of preparing a declaration on ethical principles in relation to climate change at its 195th session in 2014 and noted the progress made by COMEST in its work on a framework of ethical principles related to climate change (195 EX/5 Part I.C). A summary of the work of COMEST on this matter was published on UNESCO’s website on the occasion of the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2014 (COP20, Lima, Peru, December 2014).

The Report of COMEST on the “Ethical Principles for Climate Change: Adaptation and Mitigation” was adopted at the 9th Ordinary Session of COMEST (UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, France, September–October 2015) after its presentation at the public joint meeting of the 9th Ordinary Session of COMEST and the 22nd Session of the International Bioethics Committee (IBC) in Paris on 30 September 2015. The 2015 Report of COMEST served as the technical basis for discussion at the 38th session of the General Conference of UNESCO in November 2015. The General Conference adopted 38 C/Resolution 42, by which it mandated the Director-General “to prepare a preliminary text of a non-binding declaration on ethical principles in relation to climate change”, which is to be submitted to the General Conference at its 39th session in 2017.

Ad Hoc Expert Group for the Declaration

Composition of the Group

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