 |
|
TEXT 5. CLIMATE CHANGE AND HUMAN RIGHTS
Global warming threatens all of humanity with the very harms human rights were designed to prevent - destruction of life, health property, culture, means of subsistence, residence and movement. Indigenous peoples are particularly at risk because of their intimate relationship with the earth and its natural systems. Changes wrought to these systems by global warming can make life untenable for communities that depend on the environment for their food, water, shelter and cultural practices. For low-lying coastal areas, such as Bangladesh and the Maldives, a one-meter rise in sea level threatens to displace millions. Countries such as Grenada that were previously believed to be outside hurricane zones now experience devastating storms costing several years of gross domestic product. Glaciers in the Andes and Himalayas, the main source of drinking water for hundreds of millions of people, could disappear within 50 years. Africa, home to most of the world's least developed countries, is especially vulnerable to climate change, through such impacts as desertification, threats to agriculture and animal husbandry, and drought.
For years, CIEL has highlighted the ways in which global warming is or will affect the human rights of indigenous and other vulnerable communities around the world.
Inuit Case
CIEL worked with two partner organizations, Earthjustice and the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), to prepare a human rights petition on behalf of the Inuit; we filed the petition with the IACHR in December 2005. The petition explains in detail why the devastating impacts of global warming in the Arctic violate the human rights of the Inuit, as defined by the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man. In November 2006, CIEL was informed by the Commission that it had decided not to proceed with the petition "at present." Even though the IACHR did not proceed with the petition, it has helped change the tenor of the debate about global warming by introducing a moral and human rights dimension. Whereas the debate was previously limited almost exclusively to economic and environmental impacts, it is now increasingly frequent to hear climate protection and avoidance of its damaging consequences characterized as a human right. Additionally, the extensive media attention given to the petition helped to bring pressure to bear on the U.S. Government, and many legal, academic, and environmental organizations also took note of the petition.
IACHR Hearing
In March 2007, CIEL Senior Attorney Donald Goldberg, Inuit leader and Nobel Prize nominee, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, and Earthjustice Managing Attorney Martin Wagner provided testimony before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). The subject of their testimony was the impact of global warming on the Inuit and other vulnerable communities in the Americas and the implication of these impacts for human rights. Mr. Goldberg also provided some recommendations as to how the Commission might proceed.