Changing the Climate of Human Rights is Change?

This is an interesting article I just found on a university computer. How the universe works, I have to smile. Sometimes information just comes to you.

The right to be human, it is the real agenda of environmental changes. What I see so clearly is not a fear of environmental decline, always I see nature as far more adaptable than us, what I see and ask is can humans adapt to nature? Nature is the change agent, can we see and feel our intimate connection embedded in nature? We are not separate.  Can we see it with each other? that we are also interconnected as a human family.  I see the natural world and the human world as mirrors.

This paper below is looking at human rights connected with climate change and how human rights and freedoms are affected by climate change.

In my view these linkages are clear when you notice melting ice caps, cracking ice sheets,  rising sea levels (some countries in danger of disappearing), bleaching coral, changing habitats, animal movements, changes in precipitation, droughts, tsunami’s, cyclones and tornadoes  and volcanic eruptions.  Clearly this impacts humankind as we do live off nature and within it.  So we will see increasing climate refugees, I believe it was Clinton who said here in Australia some years ago, something to the effect of noting our concerns about a few thousand refugees and what he saw in the future as hundreds of thousands of climate refugees.   So the impacts in my view will be profound.   From a peace perspective it is clear that there will be increased conflicts over food, water and resources and people moving across borders.  The movement of refugees will challenge borders, the sovereignty of nation states and raising the interesting question of whether we help each other or close borders?  Hence the mentality of am I separate from other? that is other nationalities, operating from self interest  or am I one with my neighbours? do we save each other?, do we help each other to survive? or survival of the fittest? most selfish in this case.   The fascinating aspect of climate issues is how humans treat each other in relation to this crisis and whether they can find the key of oneness to their collective survival.

Whilst many speak of climate change, I tend to see the term as earth changes, as the planet is one holistic intelligent system. It doesn’t separate CO2 in the atmsophere from sea temperature, to earthquakes, species extinction to hail storms etc.  It can be envisaged as one body, all intimately connected and self regulating.  Hence when the organism is unwell it can manifest all types of symptoms and dis-ease.

 http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/elr/vol33_2/Limon.pdf

HUMAN RIGHTS AND CLIMATE CHANGE:

Google Search for pdf. Human Rights and Climate Change: Constructing a Case for Political Action by Marc Limon.

CONSTRUCTING A CASE FOR POLITICAL ACTION

Marc Limon *

On March 28, 2008, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted
Resolution 7/23′ on human rights and climate change, which, for the first
time in a U.N. resolution, explicitly recognized that climate change “has
implications for the full enjoyment of human rights. ‘2 While this may appear
a classic case of stating the obvious, the words are potentially highly
significant both for climate change policy and for human rights policy. This Article will look at the implications of Resolution 7/23 for global climate change responses. It will argue that the application of human rights principles and norms can bring a range of benefits to international and national efforts to respond to global warming, and that the obstacles to doing so are mainly practical difficulties, related in particular to the entrenched “path dependence” of the two policy areas. This Article will also turn this premise around to suggest ways in which the issue of climate change could or should affect international human rights policy. In particular, it will argue that the issue of climate change points to the need for a reconceptualization of human rights, and suggests the need for a reconsideration of the utility of environmental rights. The Article mainly reflects the views of a political rather than a legal practitioner, although these views are necessarily embedded in law.

This Article is divided into four sections. First, it offers a brief overview of the international movement to draw linkages between climate change3 and human rights,4 an effort with which the Maldives has been inti-mately involved. Second, it summarizes our current understanding of the nature and extent of those linkages. Third, it asks whether human rights principles should be integrated into climate change policy – what is the value added and what are the potential risks? Fourth, this Article presents some initial ideas on how the international community might usefully and practically operationalize the human rights-climate change interface in order to contribute to better policy responses. Finally, turning the overall premise around, this Article suggests ways in which international human rights law might adapt in response to the challenges posed by climate change and, in this respect, might perhaps learn from principles applied in environmental law.

A YOUNG AND FAST-EVOLVING AGENDA

International interest in the linkages between climate change and human rights is a relatively recent phenomenon. It has only been since 2005 that a small number of vulnerable states, indigenous groups, and non-government organizations have begun to take a series of separate yet mutually reinforcing steps to understand, highlight, and leverage those linkages. The impetus for these actions was three-fold. First, there was a general frustration on the part of vulnerable communities at the slow pace of progress in tackling climate change using the traditional politico-scientific approach. This in turn suggested that a new supplementary framework was needed. Second, there was a growing sense on the part of these groups that, with a scientific consensus on climate change largely in place, it was time to shift the debate onto the victims of the problem – namely individual people and communities around the world. Third, and linked to the previous point, those people and communities most at risk from climate change became increasingly frustrated at the lack of any kind of accountability mechanism to deal with a phenomenon caused by man and with devastating human consequences. This frustration was enhanced by the knowledge of unequal power relationships underlying the problem, as illustrated by the “inverse relation ship between responsibility for climate change and vulnerability to its impacts.”5

Climate change and human rights were first explicitly linked, it seems, in December 2005, when an alliance of Inuit from Canada and the United States, led by Sheila Watt-Cloutier, filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.6 The petition alleged that the human rights of the plaintiffs had been infringed and were being further violated due in large part to the failure of the United States to curb its greenhouse gas emissions.’ In the words of the petition: “the effects of global warming constitute violations of Inuit human rights for which the United States is responsible.”8 Although the petition was rejected without prejudice in November 2006, the Commission subsequently invited, in February 2007, the Inuit Allilance together with representatives of the Center for International Environmental Law (“CIEL”) and Earthjustice to provide testimony on the link between global warming and human rights.’

The Inuit case introduced the idea that rather than being a global and intangible phenomenon belonging squarely to the natural sciences, global climate change is in fact a very human process with demonstrable human cause and effect. It could thus, like any other aspect of human interaction, be placed within a human rights framework of responsibility, accountability, and justice. In the words of Mary Robinson, speaking during a lecture at Chatham House in December 2006: “Climate change has already begun to affect the fulfilment of human rights, and our shared human rights framework entitles and empowers developing countries and impoverished communities to claim protection of these rights.”‘ 0

On July 17, 2007, the then-President of the Maldives, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, delivered a speech at the Royal Commonwealth Society in London to mark the twentieth anniversary of Maldivian advocacy on the question of climate change.” Reflecting on the intervening years of “failed promises and missed opportunities,” the President concluded that, in order to turn the situation around, the world would need to reconceptualize climate change as a profoundly human issue with human causes and human consequences. 2 The world would, in short, have to understand the “human dimension of climate change,” including the effects of climate change on human rights.13 In November 2007, the Maldives convened a Small Island States Conference to address these effects and the implications thereof. 4 The outcome of the meeting – the Mal6 Declaration on the Human Dimension of Global Climate Change – stated explicitly (and for the first time in an international agreement) that “climate change has clear and immediate implications for the full enjoyment of human rights” and called on the United Nations human rights system to address the issue as a matter of urgency. 5

The Male Declaration was taken to the Thirteenth Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (“COP 13”) in Bali and was presented to assembled world governments by President Gayoom. It stated: “We [Small Island States] believe that climate change must be viewed not only as a danger to natural systems, but also as a direct threat to human survival and well-being. We are convinced that this negotiation process must not be viewed as a traditional series of government trade-offs, but as an urgent international effort to safeguard human lives, homes, rights and livelihoods.”‘ 6 Echoing these sentiments, Kyung-wha Kang, Deputy U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said, “[A]ny
strategy to deal with climate change, whether in terms of adaptation or mitigation, must incorporate the consequences for humans, as individuals and communities, and the human rights framework is the most effective way to do so.”‘ 7

Operating in parallel with these initial steps, a range of other actors also began to explore the interface between climate change and human rights, including the International Council on Human Rights Policy (“ICHRP”), 8 the Organization of American States, 19 Oxfam International, 20 Mary Robinson’s Realizing Rights,2′ Kofi Annan’s Global Humanitarian Forum,22 and the United Nations Development Programme. The latter, in its 2007/2008 Human Development Report, argued that climate change represents “a systematic violation of the human rights of the world’s poor and future generations, and a step back from universal values. ’23

In March 2007, these various strands were drawn together at the United Nations Human Rights Council’s seventh regular session. During the session’s ministerial and general segments, 24 Bolivia, Bhutan, Greece, Maldives, 25 Nigeria, Indonesia, and the Philippines all noted the serious consequences of climate change for the full enjoyment of human rights and called on the Council to address the human rights dimension. 6 Then, on

March 28, 2008, the Maldives, together with seventy-eight co-sponsors from all regional groups,27 secured the adoption, by consensus, of United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution 7/23 on “Human Rights and Climate Change,” which, for the first time in an official U.N. resolution, stated explicitly that climate change “poses an immediate and far-reaching threat to people and communities around the world and has implications for the full enjoyment of human rights. 2

The Resolution asked the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (“OHCHR”) to prepare a “detailed analytical study on the relationship between climate change and human rights, to be submitted to the Council prior to its tenth session,” and further required that the study and a summary of the Council debate be sent to the Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC ahead of the Fifteenth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (“COP15”) in Copenhagen, in order to inform negotiations.29

STATING THE OBVIOUS?

On January 15, 2009, the OHCHR published an advanced unedited version of the analytical study requested under Resolution 7/23.30 The Report, which was based on written and oral submissions by over thirty states and thirty-five international organizations, national human rights institutions, NGOs, and academic bodies, marks a first attempt by the United Nations human rights machinery to undertake a comprehensive assessment of the complex and multifaceted inter-linkages between climate change, environmental degradation, and human rights. Although the Report is extremely conservative in its analysis and conclusions (many of the national submissions go much further), it is nevertheless highly significant in that it marks a definitive break with arguments about whether there is indeed a relationship between climate change and human rights, and thus points toward a new debate on the implications of and necessary responses to that relationship. It may seem surprising that such a break is necessary – that states or other entities would seriously argue with the premise that climate change does have implications for human rights (i.e., that there are linkages). However, at least at an official level, this was indeed the case.

During negotiations on Resolution 7/23, there was considerable opposition to the assertion, in preambular paragraph one, that climate change has “implications for the full enjoyment of human rights.” This opposition, led by major oil producing and oil consuming countries, was part legal (based on the argument that there was no official U.N. documentation to support the claim) and part strategic (if the point were to be conceded, it would necessarily open up various new avenues of debate). However, perhaps unwilling to argue that climate change does not have human rights implications in the Council, which holds its meetings in public, these countries eventually conceded the point.

Notwithstanding, evidence of residual resistance can be found in various national submissions to the OHCHR study.3 For example, Canada only acknowledges that “there can be an impact on the effective enjoyment of human rights as a result of situations arising from environmental degradation amplified by climate change.”32 Similarly, the United Kingdom (which was in fact a strong supporter of the Resolution) “recognises that climate change may impact on the full enjoyment of human rights at the national level.”33 The United States meanwhile took a different approach – agreeing that “climate change . . . has implications for the full enjoyment of human rights,” but noting “of course, that [such] statements are factual ob-servations rather than statements of international law.” 34 The U.S. submission also points out that the effects of climate change on the enjoyment of human rights can be positive as well as negative.35 In order to respond to concerns among some States expressed during negotiations on Resolution 7/23 that OHCHR lacks the expertise to undertake any work in the area of climate change, the Office’s Report uses the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report36 (“IPCC AR4”) as a scientific foundation upon which its subsequent human rights analysis is built. 37 It then attempts to tackle a significant legal problem associated with drawing linkages between climate change and human rights – namely that climate change affects human rights only indirectly (with environmental degradation being the intermediary step) and, at present, “the universal human rights treaties do not refer to a specific right to a safe and healthy environment. ’38 To respond to this legal gap, the OHCHR Report draws attention to the 1972 Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment 39 (“the Stockholm Declaration”), which “reflects a general recognition of the interdependence and interrelatedness of human rights and the environment,” as well as to the fact that “United Nations human rights treaty bodies recognize the intrinsic link between the environment and the realization of a range of human rights.” 4

The OHCHR Report then outlines “how the empirical reality and projections of the adverse effects of climate change [i.e., the baseline provided by IPCC AR4] on the effective enjoyment of human rights relate to obligations assumed by States under the international human rights treaties. 41 The Report asserts that global warming “will potentially have implications for the full range of human rights” but that certain rights are most directly implicated by climate change-related impacts. 42 These rights include the right to life, the right to adequate food, the right to water, the right to health, the right to adequate housing, and the right to self-determination. 43 Moreover, while these implications affect individuals and communities around the world, certain countries – including small island states; countries with lowlying coastal deltas; and countries liable to floods, drought, and desertifica-tion – are particularly vulnerable. 44 These arguments are strongly supported by certain national submissions (e.g., Maldives, Mali, and Marshall Islands), which catalogue and explore each of the affected rights in considerable detail and place these impacts in the context of geographical vulnerability. 45

The Report also argues that “[v]ulnerability due to geography is often compounded by a low capacity to adapt,” meaning the poor are especially affected.46 Moreover, climate change serves to exacerbate existing vulnerabilities, meaning that the rights of groups such as children, women, minorities, the elderly, and persons with disabilities are disproportionately threatened.47 Both points in turn raise questions about equality and nondiscrimination. Finally, the Report makes the important but often overlooked point that measures taken to mitigate (e.g., use of food crops for biofuels) and adapt to (e.g., dislocation from ancestral areas) the effects of climate change also have human rights implications. 4

Following the publication of the OHCHR Report, it can now be said to be beyond any doubt, legal or otherwise, that climate change has serious and widespread implications for the full enjoyment of human rights. As the International Council on Human Rights Policy (“ICHRP”) notes in its book Climate Change and Human Rights: A Rough Guide, “As a matter of simple fact, climate change is already undermining the realisation of a broad range of internationally protected human rights. ‘ 49 The Marshall Islands, in its submission, goes even further, arguing that climate change impairs not only the freedoms guaranteed “in human rights agreements, but also [those provided] within the U.N. Charter, and as part of customary international law.”5 0

As of March 25, 2009, the “simple fact” referred to by ICHRP is now reflected and embedded in international law. On that date, the tenth session of the U.N. Human Rights Council adopted, by consensus and with eightynine co-sponsors, Resolution 10/4 on human rights and climate change.” Resolution 10/4 responds to the OHCHR Report by drawing out some key conclusions from the study and by outlining certain next steps. In terms of the former, the Resolution notes that “climate change-related effects have a range of implications, both direct and indirect, for the effective enjoyment of human rights” and goes on to list those rights that are particularly implicated. 52 It further states that the effects of climate change will fall hardest on the rights of those people who are already in vulnerable situations “owing to factors such as geography, poverty, gender, age, indigenous or minority status and disability. ’53

To ACT OR NOT TO ACT?

The knowledge, as expounded by the ICHRP and confirmed by Resolution 10/4, that climate change has serious negative implications for the realization of a broad range of internationally protected human rights and that “the interlinkages are deep and complex154 in fact, brings us up to date with the current status of the debate at the international level. Little or no consideration has been given, by governments or international organizations (nor, seemingly, by NGOs or academic bodies), as to what this new reality should mean in practice. If climate change does indeed have serious and widespread, deep and complex implications for human rights, then what, if anything, should be done about it?

global climate change treaty by the end of 2009. While these negotiations were not initiated with the express intention of protecting and promoting human rights, it is nevertheless clear that the “full, effective and sustained implementation of the Convention through long-term cooperative action now, up to and beyond 2012″17 would have, inter alia, that effect. The problem with this argument is, of course, that despite over three decades of international advocacy on climate change, 8 the world is no closer to a workable solution today than it was in 1987, when the Maldives first issued warnings about climate change to the U.N. General Assembly. 9 Moreover, many observers doubt that the Bali Roadmap will succeed in reversing the trend. As James Gustave Speth, who has personally witnessed this unfolding failure as policy-maker, advocate, and academic, has concluded:

The current system of international efforts to help the environment simply isn’t working. The design makes sure it won’t work, and the statistics keep getting worse. We need a new design …. For twenty years thoughtful people and intelligent leaders should have known that we needed to get busy. Precious time has been wasted. And now a new generation has been given a climate problem that is deeper and more difficult.6°

The national submission of the Marshall Islands powerfully highlights the growing lack of trust in the UNFCCC process, as well as the inverse and In order to answer this fundamental and urgent55 question, it is necessary to first ask: should the international community do anything? Only if the answer to that question is “yes” must the follow-up question be addressed: what responses should be considered?

In terms of the first question, it can, of course, be argued that if climate
change has serious and wide-ranging human rights implications for millions of people around the world, especially when those implications include core rights such as to life and self-determination, and when the malign impacts fall heaviest on the weakest and most vulnerable, then the international community is duty-bound to respond. However, this argument misses one key point: the international community is already responding – a response supported by the almost two hundred states parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (“UNFCCC”) and pursued through proportional emergence of questions regarding the value of other approaches to reinforce or replace the traditional architecture:

There is general uncertainty as to if international climate negotiations will result in urgent or actual progress, or if the international community is merely going through the motions . . . . In summary, it may be difficult for [the Marshall Islands] to rely solely upon ongoing international negotiations as a means to assure its people their basic rights and fundamental freedoms.61