GENEVA: The UN’s rights chief warned on Monday that environmental threats were worsening conflicts worldwide and would soon constitute the biggest challenge to human rights.

Michelle Bachelet said climate change, pollution and nature loss were already having a severe impact but that countries were consistently failing to take action to curb the damage.

“The interlinked crises of pollution, climate change and biodiversity act as threat multipliers, amplifying conflicts, tensions and structural inequalities, and forcing people into increasingly vulnerable situations,” Bachelet told the opening of the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

“As these environmental threats intensify, they will constitute the single greatest challenge to human rights of our era.”

The former Chilean president said the threats were already “directly and severely impacting a broad range of rights, including the rights to adequate food, water, education, housing, health, development, and even life itself”.

She said environmental damage usually hurt the poorest people and nations the most, as they often have the least capacity to respond.

Bachelet said recent months have unleashed “extreme and murderous climate events”, while drought was potentially forcing millions of people into misery, hunger and displacement.

Bachelet said tackling the crisis was “doable”, suggesting that spending to revive economies after the Covid pandemic could be focused on environmentally friendly projects.

But she said countries had not taken this approach consistently — and were even failing to fund and implement commitments made under the Paris climate accords.