The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, warned Monday that environmental threats from pollution and climate change are fueling intensifying conflicts around the world and will soon represent the greatest challenge to human rights.

Bachelet told the UN Human Rights Council that "the interconnected crises of pollution, climate change and biodiversity represent a multiplier threat, exacerbating conflict, tension and inequity and putting people in increasingly dangerous situations," warning that "as these environmental threats intensify, they will constitute "the greatest challenge to human rights of our time."