Global pact on environmental rights to be presented to UN

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Hollywood star turned activist Arnold Schwarzenegger joined politicians and legal experts in Paris Saturday to launch a campaign for a global pact to protect the human rights to a clean, healthy environment.

French President Emmanuel Macron promised to present the pact, which supporters want to see become an international treaty, to the United Nations in September.

"With the planetary plan, we need to move on to a new stage after the Paris accord," said Macron, whose popularity rating rose to 64 percent in June against 62 percent in May, an Ifop poll showed on Sunday.

A total of 196 nations signed a landmark agreement in December 2015 to take steps to reduce greenhouse gases and combat global warming.

French President Emmanuel Macron shakes hands with Arnold Schwarzenegger after a meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, on June 23, 2017. /VCG Photo

"We already have two international (human rights) pacts... The idea is to create a third, for a third generation of rights - environmental rights," said former French prime minister Laurent Fabius, who also presided over the Paris COP 21 conference on climate change.

Seeking to underline the urgency of the need to act, Fabius said it was time for "less talk, more action," borrowing the turn of phrase from Schwarzenegger, the former governor of California. Former UN chief Ban Ki-moon was also at the gathering.

The initiative comes just weeks after US President Donald Trump announced his decision to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement. But Schwarzenegger said climate change must not be a partisan political issue.

US President Donald Trump announces his decision on the Paris Climate Accord in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, D.C., on June 1, 2017. /VCG Photo

"It is absolutely imperative that we not make it a political issue," he said after meeting Macron on Friday. "This is not the right versus the left because there is no liberal air or conservative air. We all breathe the same air. There is no liberal water or conservative water, we all drink the same water," the star of "The Terminator" movies said.

The new pact to be eventually put to the United Nations for adoption imposes legally-binding obligations on signatory states, its drafters say. The end goal of the pact is a legal treaty under which states can be brought to justice for flouting the rights of a group or individual.

(Source: AFP, Reuters)

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