CCPR/C/135/D/3624/2019 article 17 in the presence of interference by the State authorities and physical or legal persons.46 8.11 The Committee takes note of the State party’s extensive and detailed information that it has taken numerous actions to address adverse impacts caused by climate change and carbon emissions generated within its territory. Those actions include, with relevance to the authors’ claims, release of the Torres Strait Regional Adaptation and Resilience Plan 2016– 2021, which focused both on climate impacts and reducing vulnerability through resilience; direct involvement of the Regional Authority with communities in the region to enable them to respond to climate change impacts; community heat mapping to monitor and reduce heat risk; installation of monitoring sites relating to tides, sea level, temperature and rainfall; commitment of over $A 15 billion for country-wide natural resource management, water infrastructure, drought and disaster resilience and recovery funding; investment of $A 100 million for management of ocean habitats and coastal environments; provision of regional and global climate finance of $A 1.4 billion (2015–2020) and $A 1.5 billion (2020–2025), with a strong focus on achieving adaptation outcomes; reduction of its carbon emissions by 20.1 per cent (from 2005 to 2020) and by 46.7 per cent per person (from 1990 to 2020); investment of an estimated $A 20 billion in low emissions technologies (2020–2030) and $A 3.5 billion in the Emissions Reduction Fund; initiation or completion of 58 actions identified in the Torres Strait Regional Adaptation and Resilience Plan 2016–2021; development of local adaptation and resilience plans for the 14 outer island communities; development by the Torres Strait Regional Authority of a draft regional resilience framework to help build greater local and regional resilience to climate change impacts, informed by discussions with community representatives; ongoing assessment of climate change impacts for Torres Strait communities; coastal mapping on the Torres Strait islands to inform coastal adaptation planning; continuation of coastal protection initiatives by the Regional Authority to address erosion and storm surge impacts on local communities; and investment of $A 40 million in stage 2 of the Torres Strait sea walls programme (2019–2023). The Committee recalls the information contained in paragraph 8.7 concerning the State party’s completed and ongoing efforts to build new or updated sea walls on the islands where the authors live and notes that the sea walls are all expected to be completed by 2023. 8.12 However, the Committee notes that the State party has not specifically commented on the authors’ allegations that they attempted to request the construction of adaptation measures, in particular upgraded sea walls, at various points over the last decades. While welcoming the new construction of sea walls on the four islands at issue, the Committee observes that the State party has not explained the delay in sea wall construction with respect to the islands where the authors live. It has not contested the factual allegations set forth by the authors concerning the concrete climate change impacts on their home, private life and family. The Committee notes that the State party has not provided alternative explanations concerning the reduction of marine resources used for food and the loss of crops and fruit trees on the land on which the authors live and grow crops, elements that constitute components of the authors’ private life, family and home. The Committee also notes the authors’ specific descriptions of the ways in which their lives have been adversely affected by flooding and inundation of their villages and ancestral burial lands; destruction or withering of their traditional gardens through salinification caused by flooding or seawater ingress; and decline of nutritionally and culturally important marine species and associated coral bleaching and ocean acidification. The Committee further notes the authors’ allegations that they experience anxiety and distress owing to erosion that is encroaching on some homes in their communities and that the upkeep and visiting of ancestral graveyards is associated with the very heart of their culture, which requires experiencing feelings of communion with deceased relatives. The Committee notes the authors’ statement that their most important cultural ceremonies are meaningful only if performed on native community lands. The Committee considers that when climate change impacts, including environmental degradation on traditional (Indigenous) lands in communities where subsistence is highly dependent on available natural resources and where alternative means of subsistence and humanitarian aid are unavailable, have direct repercussions on the right to one’s home, and the adverse consequences of those impacts are serious because of their intensity or duration and the 46 General comment No. 16 (1988), para. 1. 15