Chloé Maurel International governance in the “protection of living beings” is at the heart of discussions. In July 2021, the UN Secretary-General, Portuguese national António Guterres, expressed a strong position, considering it “highly desirable” to create the crime of “ecocide” by including it in the list of crimes tried by the International Criminal Court. Some countries have already innovated by recognizing rights for nature, for example for rivers. This is the case in India and New Zealand, which, since 2017, have recognized legal personality for rivers such as the Ganges and Yamuna (India), and the Whanganui River (New Zealand), in order to guarantee their rights to be preserved in their integrity. ...

Chloé Maurel With the creation of the International Labour Organization (ILO), and then the United Nations, “social security became a fundamental human right and was codified as such in international treaties” such as the 1966 UN Covenant on Economic and Social Rights, as recalled by CETIM (Centre Europe-Tiers Monde, or the European Centre for the Third World), a research centre focusing on the roots of maldevelopment in the Global South. Yet, as CETIM observes, “80 per cent of the world’s population is totally or partially excluded from social security. Worse still, the implementation of neoliberal policies around the world over the last three decades has led to the dismantling, or at least the weakening, of social security in countries where it had been successfully institutionalised and universalised after the Second World War.” ...

Chloé Maurel Created in 1950 and bringing together 187 Member States today, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is one of the specialized agencies of the United Nations. As the successor to the International Meteorological Organization, founded in 1873, it now brings together almost all the countries of the world around an essential mission: coordinating international cooperation in the fields of meteorology, climate, hydrology and atmospheric observation. Its role is to ensure the rapid exchange of meteorological data, establish common scientific standards, develop early warning systems and provide essential expertise for understanding climate change. ...

In March 2023, the United Nations Water Conference brought together some 10,000 representatives of UN member states, NGOs and businesses in New York, and called for the appointment of a UN Special Envoy on Water* to address the urgent need to ensure greater respect for the human right to this essential resource. This imperative is underpinned by the UN General Assembly resolution adopted on 28 July 2010, recognizing “the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights”. Indeed, water, one of the Earth’s natural resources, is not just another commodity, and given its vital importance to humankind, it is only fitting that it should be considered a global public good, a common good. ...