Fossil fuels carry a human cost that stretches well beyond the power sector, and a report to the UN Human Rights Council argues the economy must be rebuilt around that fact within this decade. Special Rapporteur Elisa Morgera’s report, “The imperative of defossilizing our economies” (A/HRC/59/42), sets out the obligations of states and the responsibilities of businesses to phase out fossil fuels and the subsidies that support them.
What the report found
Morgera describes the human rights impacts of the fossil fuel life cycle as interlinked, intergenerational, severe and widespread. She pairs them with six decades of climate obstruction. The report ties together evidence on the climate crisis, toxic pollution, biodiversity loss, plastic pollution and harmful petrochemical production, and says the answer is system-wide change rather than an energy-sector fix.
Its main points are blunt. Burning fossil fuels is the main historical and current driver of greenhouse gas emissions, and those emissions keep rising. The report says the risks to human rights justify reading the right to a healthy environment as carrying an obligation to phase fossil fuels out. Growing plastics and petrochemical output is locking the dependence in beyond the energy sector. The industry has enjoyed very large profits while being heavily subsidized, and the report says the tax burden of a just transition ends up on low- and middle-income households. It also cites research documenting the sector’s long strategy of keeping the public uninformed about climate change, which it says has undermined rights to information, education and science.
Its recommendations: defossilize the economy, reprioritize energy demand, phase out subsidies carefully, “defossilize” information systems so public opinion and democratic debate are shielded from undue commercial influence, remediate fossil fuel harm, advance multilateral reforms and enforce business responsibilities. Morgera calls for comprehensive action on the phaseout within this decade.
The science behind the argument
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned in its Sixth Assessment Report that warming above 1.5°C over pre-industrial levels would bring ecosystem collapse and endanger the livelihoods of millions, especially people already in vulnerable situations. Rising seas, floods, heat waves, droughts, desertification, water shortages and the spread of tropical and vector-borne diseases threaten rights from life and health to housing, food and culture.
Meeting that threat, the Geneva Environment Network notes, requires states to cut emissions, deal with impacts and address losses and damages in ways that account for intersecting forms of discrimination. Affected communities, civil society and Indigenous Peoples must be able to take part safely and meaningfully.
Geneva’s role
The Human Rights Council, the Special Procedures and the treaty bodies all sit in Geneva, and the network describes their role in climate questions as increasingly pivotal. The Council has taken up resolutions and discussions on specific aspects of climate change, while rapporteurs write thematic reports.
The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, a body of 18 independent experts, published General Comment No. 27 (2025) on the environmental dimension of sustainable development. It affirmed that a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is an essential precondition for economic, social and cultural rights, and warned that environmental crises are pushing the planet toward “irreversible biophysical tipping points.”
