The Geneva Climate Change Concertation Group (GeCCco), the Geneva Interfaith Forum on Climate Change and Human Rights (GIF), QUNO and other NGOs concerned about the impact of climate change on human rights, co-hosted CLIMATE CHANGE AND HUMAN RIGHTS: THE WAY FORWARD IN THE HRC, a side event to the 28th session of the Human Rights Council. The side event was held on Friday, 6 March, from 1-3pm in Room XXVII at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. 

QUNO, together with the World Council of Churches and Religions for Peace, co-hosted a side event on the human rights impacts of anthropogenic climate change on 10 December 2014, during the 20th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Lima, Peru. 

QUNO Geneva is pleased to share the most recent issue of our Geneva Reporter newsletter and accompanying briefing paper on The Aarhus Convention. Other featured articles include updates on our A New Framework for Trade and Investment in Agriculture work, the Human Rights Council, UN Climate Summit, and Peace and Disarmament.

In March, QUNO organized a side event at the Human Rights Council on “Procedural Rights and the Environment: Preventing conflict around water, land and food". Procedural rights include the right to information, public participation in decision-making and right to remedy and complement substantive rights such as the right to life or the right to food. Jonathan Woolley of QUNO chaired the event and the Permanent Representatives of Ethiopia and Chile to the UN in Geneva spoke on existing and planned legal frameworks relating to the environment in Africa and Latin America, respectively.

Diane Hendrick of QUNO Geneva and Alexandra Trzeciak-Duval, former Head of the Policy Division in OECD’s Directorate for Development Co-operation, co-moderated an e-discussion on Mainstreaming Food Security into Peacebuilding Processes. You can read contributions to the e-discussion at http://www.fao.org/fsnforum/protracted-crises.

QUNO has established a new meeting space in Bonn, from which the new Climate Change Representative, Lindsey Fielder Cook, will work.  This new location enables QUNO staff to work closely with Bonn-based organisations focused on climate change and environmental issues.  The space is set between the woods and the UN Offices in Bonn and is heated by a variety of green energy sources.  

QUNO attended the 19th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 9th Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP), held from 11 – 22 November in Warsaw, Poland. QUNO’s support of the UNFCCC multilateral process includes offering off-the-record spaces for delegates to meet, exchange ideas, and build bridges and trust. To find out more about the conference and the UNFCCC, visit http://unfccc.int/meetings/warsaw_nov_2013/meeting/7649.php.

QUNO attended the UNFCCC Joint Workshop on the Framework for Various Approaches, Non-Market-Based Approaches and the New Market Mechanism in Bonn, Germany.

Lindsey Cook, representing QUNO, highlighted that current global emission rates are at "top end of ... emissions scenarios", likely leading to increased temperatures of 4.2 to 5 centigrade by 2100. She encouraged negotiators to act on the "small window to keep rising global temperatures below 2.6 degrees Centigrade", and spoke of negotiators’ "extraordinarily privileged position to act positively".