A/70/287 addressing this challenge in the context of food security and climate change. 43 Given that more than 75 per cent of the world’s poorest people live in rural areas and that 2.5 billion people live on small farms and are entirely dependent on agriculture for their survival, the fact that 30 per cent of the Earth ’s surface is affected by the degradation of fragile drylands poses a significant problem. 44 Poverty and food security should be addressed by adopting sustainable land management practices and the collaborative work by the parties to the two important international conventions is encouraging. The inclusion of a human rights approach to this work will introduce a climate-justice dimension that will be of benefit to people living in acute vulnerability. VI. The United Nations climate change regime and the right to food 47. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the main international treaty governing the global climate change regime, and its implementing mechanism, the Kyoto Protocol, outline the main objectives, principles and guidelines for industrialized and developing States to combat the detrimental effects of climate change. 48. The United Nations Framework Convention requires States to adopt national and regional programmes and policies to mitigate and adapt to climate change (art. 4 (1) (b)) and calls on them to take precautionary measures to anticipate, prevent or minimize its causes (art. 3 (3)). It recognizes that climate change is fundamentally an intergenerational problem and refers to the protection of future generations (art. 3 (1)). Articles 3 and 4 recognize the specific needs of developing countries, especially those that are particularly vulne rable to the adverse effects of climate change. 49. Despite the inclusion in the United Nations Framework Convention of these principles and the acknowledgement of the link between food security and climate change, these elements are not part of the prevailing philosophies in climate change policymaking and many of the principles and commitments outlined in the Convention fall short of what is needed, owing to vagueness and the absence of enforcement mechanisms. For instance, the Compliance Committee of the Kyoto Protocol focuses on monitoring the achievement of emission reduction goals, rather than ensuring accountability for human rights violations. 45 More specifically, the mitigation and adaptation policies implemented under the United Nations Framework Convention do not take into account their effects on vulnerable populations, who are the most food insecure. 50. The impact of climate change on food security was recognized in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (art. 2), but receive d little attention until the spike in food prices in 2007. The Intergovernmental Panel on __________________ 43 44 45 15-10041 Chris Arsenault, “Bureaucratic infighting hampers action on droughts: U.N. official”, 10 March 2015. Available from www.businessinsider.com/r-bureaucratic-infighting-hampers-action-ondroughts-un-official-2015-3. Ibid. Elisabeth Caesens and Maritere Padilla Rodríguez, Climate Change and the Right to Food: A Comprehensive Study, Publication Series on Ecology, vol. 8 (Berlin, Henrich Böll Stiftung, 2009). 13/25