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UN Expert Calls for Urgent Defossilization and Reparations to Prevent ‘Catastrophic’ Human Rights and Climate Crisis

A new report by UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Climate Change, Professor Elisa Morgera, calls for a radical overhaul of global economies to fully phase out fossil fuels and hold wealthy nations accountable for decades of harm.

Morgera demands that countries like the US, UK, Canada, and Australia must legally commit to ending oil, gas, and coal use by 2030, and provide compensation to communities most affected by climate change, particularly Indigenous peoples and island nations.

The report condemns the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long disinformation campaigns and urges states to criminalize climate disinformation, ban fossil fuel lobbying and advertising, and prosecute greenwashing.

Key recommendations include banning fracking and new fossil fuel exploration, removing fossil fuel subsidies—which topped $1.4 trillion in 2023 alone—and redirecting funds to climate adaptation, clean energy, and reparations for communities harmed by extraction and pollution.

Morgera argues that “defossilization” is essential to protect fundamental human rights like life, health, food, water, and self-determination, and says a clean energy transition is not only feasible but economically and socially beneficial.

“The most radical thing is to keep allowing fossil fuels to cause widespread human rights abuses and environmental destruction,” Morgera said. “Defossilizing our economies is the only way forward.”