A/75/298 tremendous utility in our existential fight against catastrophic climate change. This means that all environmental standards and policies should take the cultural dimension into consideration, and that we have yet one more reason to take cultures seriously, to protect cultural heritage and ensure cultural rights. Without them, we are at even greater risk in our warming world. V. Conclusions and recommendations A. Conclusion 77. As we emerge from the pandemic, it would be a tragic mistake for the international community and States to prioritize economic growth, without concern for its environmental impact, to the detriment of human rights and desperately needed climate action. This will only lead us straight into another catastrophe. Instead, we can choose holistic, human rights-based strategies that allow us to build back better and enhance climate action. 132 Culture and cultural rights must be core components of such a strategy. Culture and cultural rights are prime casualties in the climate emergency, but also useful tools in our struggle to respond to it. They enable better policy choices and outcomes. 78. We must take a holistic approach to culture, cultural rights and climate change, an approach encompassing all regions, proactively including young people and older persons, thoughtfully bringing together natural, tangible and intangible cultural heritage, which are interlinked, and all forms of cultural expression, emphasizing both education and accountability, and considering the impact of actions by both State and non-State actors. We will not make much progress until there is more accountability. We cannot be selective or be galvanized only by threats to culture and heritage with which we feel a personal connection, but must take a universal approach to protecting the cultures, heritage and cultural rights of all. 79. The current pandemic has shown that waiting to respond to risk until the risk has materialized fully is a deadly and catastrophic strategy which magnifies unbearable losses. Given the scale of the climate emergency, our cultures must urgently shift to embrace precaution, prevention and evidence -based planning. “A fundamental way to reduce the threats posed by climate change to culture and the exercise of cultural rights is by decreasing global warming.” 133 The threat to humanity and its cultures is much greater for 2°C of global warming than for 1.5°C. 134 We must now make the choices and changes needed to achieve the 1.5°C target, and fully embrace the value of our own human and cultural survival, above profits and shortterm convenience. Aspirational resolutions are insufficient. Rapid, effective action is essential. 80. The Special Rapporteur is not sure what she can say that others have not already said to convince the international community to take action while action is still possible to save ourselves and our cultures. Perhaps there is only one word to add, borrowing from children’s author Dr. Seuss. This is the word Seuss’s mythical creature, the Lorax, left for a child along with the last remaining seed for a disappearing tree in his environmentally degraded world: unless. __________________ 132 133 134 20/23 See Secretary-General, COVID-19 and human rights – we are all in this together (April 2020). Available at www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/un_policy_brief_on_human_rights_and_covid _23_april_2020.pdf. See contribution by International Council on Monuments and Sites. Ibid. 20-10595