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Declaration on Ethical Principles
Ethics of Science and
Technology
in Relation to Climate Change PAGES
Ethical principles in relation to
Questions and Answers climate change
Bioethics Questions and Answers
Question 1: What is the Declaration on Ethical Principles in Composition of the Ad Hoc
Global Ethics Observatory Relation to Climate Change about? Expert Group
Previous work done
World leaders have called climate change the biggest challenge of
the 21st century. This Declaration speaks to the responsibility to Evolution of the Declaration
address the challenge, and reinforces ethics at the centre of the First Step towards a preliminary
discussion. text

It sets out six ethical principles:

Prevention of harm Declaration on Climat
Precautionary approach
Equity and justice
Sustainable development
Solidarity
Scientific knowledge and integrity in decision-making

The text anticipates that agreed principles should be applied through Declaration on Climat
education and international cooperation. Great care has been taken
to achieve no duplication, no re-interpretation nor contradiction of
international negotiated texts (notably the United Nations Framework
Agreement on Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris
Agreement), which are the source for states’ commitments.
Question 2: Why do we need a declaration of ethical principles in
relation to climate change?
Climate change is fundamentally an ethical issue. If failure to act
could have catastrophic implications, responses to climate change
that are not thought through carefully, with ethical implications in Declaration on Climat
mind, have the potential to devastate entire communities, create new
paradigms of inequity and misdistribution, and render even more
vulnerable those peoples who have already found themselves
uprooted by other man-made political and ideological struggles.
Secular and religious organizations, including from the Jewish,
Christian, Muslim, Buddhist and other philosophies and faiths, have
issued declarations making the moral, ethical, environmental,
economic and social case for tackling global warming.
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In addition, this declaration is the first global and purely ethical
declaration adopted by the United Nations on this topic. As such, it
may clarify a set of universal principles that could help us activate
international solidarity, and coordinate action across cultures and
societies. The UNESCO Declaration is a complementary tool for
communicating what is also underpinning the multilateral negotiated
instruments.
Question 3: What is the added-value?
UNESCO’s work complements work on climate change being done
within the United Nations system, for instance by the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The aim here is to express the underlying ethical principles.
The emphasis is on making this document a guide, or even a “check-
list” to help decision-makers address climate change concerns.
There is a simplicity in the text, with only six memorable ethical
principles: (1) prevention of harm; (2) precautionary approach; (3)
justice and equity; (4) sustainable development; (5) solidarity; (6)
scientific knowledge and integrity in decision-making.

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6/2/2018 Declaration on Ethical Principles in Relation to Climate Change - Questions and Answers | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Or…
There is some novelty in the text too. Given that it is produced in the
heart of UNESCO, it may not be surprising that it asserts that science
to inform decision-making should be understood as an ethical
principle in relation to climate change.
Likewise typical of UNESCO, the text anticipates that agreed
principles should be applied through education and international
cooperation.
Question 4: What is the link between this Declaration and the
2030 Agenda 2030 of Sustainable Development Goals?
Sustainable Development Goal 13 is a plea to “take urgent action to
combat climate change and its impacts” for which it sets the target “to
integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies
and planning”.
Adopting this declaration provides guidance to decision-making when
actions are considered and taken in relation to climate change: it is
necessarily aiming at supporting high quality in these urgent actions.
The World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and
Technology (COMEST), a scientific advisory body at UNESCO, has
clarified through its reports that ethics standards should help link
climate change action to all the rest of the goals and targets for
sustainable development, because there is interlinkage between the
SDGs.
Question 5: Does the declaration have any practical purpose?
Yes, UNESCO believes that agreeing universally on ethical principles
in relation to climate change will underpin ambitious voluntary
commitments by 195 countries, which adopted the 2015 Paris
Climate Agreement to combat the threat of global warming.
The declaration can support each State to scale its commitment
accordingly in order to meet the need, in light of shared
responsibilities.
A declaration could also be a powerful means to support and
advance coordinated joint action, among not only States but also
other stakeholders including civil society organizations, academics,
and local communities for example. It is thus a means to mobilize and
to sensitize people on universal principles and concerns that go
beyond the mere technical discourses on climate change.
Question 6: Why is UNESCO involved in promoting the
declaration?
UNESCO has a leading role globally as a UN Agency with a
specialized mandate in the sciences, education, culture and
communications. Its constitutional aim is to advance international
peace and the common welfare of humankind through strengthening
“intellectual and moral solidarity”.
Member States have mandated UNESCO with promoting ethical
science: science which shares the benefits of progress for all,
protects the planet from ecological collapse and which creates a solid
basis for peaceful cooperation.
As early as 2007, it was noted during debates at UNESCO that
ethical and social consideration of climate change action required
more reflection. Plans for a UNESCO declaration on the ethics of
climate change mitigation and adaptation were motivated by a
decade of work on climate change by the World Commission on the
Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST).
UNESCO has hosted the International Bioethics Committee (IBC)
since 1993, and COMEST since 1998. From then, they have been
the only global, multidisciplinary and pluralistic fora for bioethics and
ethics of science and technology.
UNESCO has a leading role at the United Nations level and globally
in the field of bioethics and ethics of science and technology due to
UNESCO’s normative instruments – Universal Declaration on the
Human Genome and Human Rights (1997), International Declaration
on Human Genetic Data (2003), Universal Declaration on Bioethics
and Human Rights (2005), UNESCO Recommendation on Science
and Scientific Researchers (2017) – and its capacity-building
programmes to implement those instruments. UNESCO’s normative
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6/2/2018 Declaration on Ethical Principles in Relation to Climate Change - Questions and Answers | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Or…
instruments are, in many cases, the only global instruments available
constituting an ethical framework for science and a basis for regional
and national legislation in these domains. They have been cited by
the European Court of Human Rights and other Regional Supreme
Courts on the subjects concerned.
Question 8: What other Declarations have been initiated by
UNESCO?
Here are some examples of important Declarations that UNESCO
has initiated:
Declaration of Principles of International Cultural Co-operation (1966)
Declaration on Race and Racial Prejudice (1978)
Declaration on Fundamental Principles concerning the Contribution
of the Mass Media to Strengthening Peace and International
Understanding, to the Promotion of Human Rights and to Countering
Racialism, apartheid and incitement to war (1978)
Declaration of Principles on Tolerance (1995)
Declaration on the Responsibilities of the Present Generations
towards Future Generations (1997)
Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights
(1997)
Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity (2001)
International Declaration on Human Genetic Data (2003)
Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (2005)

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