As part of its presidency of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers, Monaco is hosting the 1567th meeting of the Ministers’ Deputies at the Oceanographic Museum on Wednesday, September 2, bringing together Ambassadors and Permanent Representatives from the organisation’s 46 member states in closed session since this morning to resume work following the summer break.
The session, presided over by Ambassador Gabriel Revel, Monaco’s Permanent Representative to the Council of Europe, opened with an address from Isabelle Berro-Amadeï, Monaco’s Government Minister for Foreign Relations and Cooperation.
As part of its presidency, Monaco chose to organise a thematic debate dedicated to the environmental crisis viewed through the lens of human rights, bringing together several experts to present scientific findings, legal challenges and political perspectives on the issue. Among those taking part was Céline Dubreuil Degortes, Project Manager at the Oceanographic Institute’s Ocean Policy Directorate, who addressed what is widely referred to as the “triple planetary crisis,” the interlinked threats of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.
The theme reflects a framework the Council of Europe has increasingly built its environmental work around in recent years, tied to the Reykjavík process launched in 2023, which aims to strengthen the organisation’s commitment to protecting human rights in the face of these three compounding environmental pressures. The Council has previously warned that the three crises tend to reinforce one another, amplifying both environmental damage and economic risk, underlining the scale of the challenge facing member states as they work to address it collectively.