Human rights and climate change
Celsias has the link to an important report on the link between human rights and climate change:
According to a report published recently titled “Climate Change and Human Rights: A Rough Guide, 2008 ” (pdf), climate change is already undermining the realization of a broad range of internationally protected human rights: rights to health and even life; rights to food, water, shelter and property; rights associated with livelihood and culture; with migration and resettlement; and with personal security in the event of conflict.
The report is interesting because it integrates the two disciplines of human rights and climate change. Up until now human rights have only rarely been mentioned in climate change studies such as the IPCC reports, normally in the context of abuses that have already occurred.
The study of climate change began among meteorologists, became firmly entrenched in the physical sciences, and has only gradually – if inevitably – reached into the social sciences. The basic orientation has remained pre-eminently, though not solely, economic.
As the report notes climate change related human rights are difficult to protect:
Climate change generally (if not exclusively) affects categories of human rights that have notoriously weak enforcement mechanisms under international law – social and economic rights, the rights of migrants, rights protections during conflicts. Even those rights that have strong protections, such as rights to life and to property, are not subject to their normal enforcement procedures, because the harms caused by climate change can be attributed only indirectly to the identified perpetrators.
Not to mention the perpetrators are likely be countries and companies many miles and borders away, hard to hold accountable in the traditional legal manner. Nonetheless for pacific peoples slowly losing not just their islands, but their fishing stock, clean water and culture these are very real human rights that need protecting.
September 1st, 2008 at 6:12 pm
I would put foward that more than climate change affecting those “human rights” population and consumption are far more relivant variables, with climate change being only a small modifyer in the relationship. Aptly population and consumption are also the main variables in anthropogenic climate change. The other major variable being availibility of resources.
September 1st, 2008 at 10:18 pm
“population and consumption are far more relivant variables, with climate change being only a SMALL modifyer in the relationship.”
“SMALL” sounds good Sapient …
However, I’d like to be there when you “sell” that to the inhabitants of Kiribati and of Tuvalu, and other very low lying atolls that their people call “home”.
(I hold those two Island Groups dear, because when I was a child, each year my parents hosted two visiting teachers from there, while they were based at the Christchurch Teachers’ College.)
September 1st, 2008 at 11:27 pm
Eredwen, my intention is not to belittle the suffering.
My point is that the decreased supply of foodstocks that is likley to occur with the progression of climate change is next to irrelivant when one considers that alterations in consumption levels or the number of mouths can very easily drasticly change the demand for food and as such rather than climate change being a big factor for human rights it is small by comparison to the implications of population and consumption size; you can support four people on two loaves of bread each a day, eight people on one loave of bread a day or sixteen on half a loaf of bread a day, even thirty two on a quarter. Now who do you think is more likley to support the “rights” of others?
Population and Consumption are much more relivant than climate change to “human rights”.
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:29 am
Sapient,
Until last Friday I would have mostly agreed with your argument that population and consumption were the main factors affecting food supply (per person). On Friday I went to a seminar by a guy who works for the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (for more information on the vault, see: http://www.regjeringen.no/en/dep/lmd/campain/svalbard-global-seed-vaul t/frequently-asked-questions.html?id=462221)
It turns out that domesticated food crops are quite sensitive to temperature changes (often more sensitive to changing temperature than changing rainfall). I had thought that as the climate warms (for whatever reasons), farmers would simply be able to change their crops accordingly (for example, Italy might become too warm for growing tomatoes, but Norway would then become warm enough). Evidently things are not that simple, because other factors such as the amount of sunlight hours also affect crops, and simply moving crops from one latitude to a higher latitude will result in much lower crop yields. For example, when potatoes were introduced to Europe from the Americas, it took 200 years for the plant to adapt to the changed conditions in Europe, and during this 200 years, potatoes were not an important crop because they simply did not grow enough food or were too difficult to grow.
Now it so happens that of all the climate predictions, temperature is the one we have the most confidence about. Considering temperature increase alone, many of the worlds food growing regions can expect significantly reduced crops over the next few decades. This alone could spell disaster for a large portion of humanity. If you throw in other factors such as increasingly expensive fertilisers, use of crops for fuel, changing rainfall patterns, soil depletion etc, the picture becomes very worrying.
Fortunately we can do something about this; namely produce new varieties of food plants, or use varieties which are no longer commonly grown. This is where the seed vault comes into the equation; the vault ensures we have the required genetic diversity to produce new varieties of plants. However producing new crop varieties takes time (the value mentioned in the seminar was about 10 years on average to produce a new variety), so if we plan on adapting crops to suit a warmer climate we should be working seriously on the issue right now.
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:31 am
Sapient,
I agree with your arguments and perspective.
However, in this case I was broadening that perspective to include “the personal”, which is often overlooked as we “problem solve” on behalf of others !
One of the cornerstones of my upbringing was the question:
“How would you like it if someone did that to you.”
(Very recently I have realized that THAT question was my parents /our family’s very successful answer to the current theme of “How do you discipline a child without corporal punishment?”)
… On the web I have discovered that the former Gilbert and Ellice Islands (Tuvalu and Kiribati) have a well documented plan for WHEN rather than IF …
(Please take note of THAT fact any “Climate Change deniers” who happen to read this!
… and PLEASE imagine how you would react if there has to be a plan for the total and permanent evacuation of your homeland …)
eredwen
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:42 am
Samieula
Who is working in this field here ?
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:15 am
Eredwen,
I can see where you are coming from with the focus on “the personal”, and it certainly does have a place and I do sympathise somewhat with the populations of low lying areas and those particuarly threatened by such changes.
Samieula,
I know this, it is somewhat basic biology and simple logic. I tend to try to be as pessimistic as I can, though in this case I may be abit optimistic, I just have faith that humanity will manage to survive through adapting to his environment. Even noe it is relativly easily to simulate conditions required, particuly in greenhouses and such and although I would rather Gaia as a whole survives I have confidence that, short of the sun exploding, humanity will be able to survive, though prehaps with smaller numbers.
September 2nd, 2008 at 5:10 am
eredwen,
Can you post a link to this?
“On the web I have discovered that the former Gilbert and Ellice Islands (Tuvalu and Kiribati) have a well documented plan for WHEN rather than IF …”
Only reference I can find is that in 2001 the whole population (10,000+) was to come to New Zealand.
Something Al Gore said in his docudrama was happening at the time.
I havent seen any reports that the Tuvalu people were coming here and how their resettlement was being organised.
And why come to New Zealand when PNG is much closer physically, culturally and climatically?
I cant recall any money set aside in any of Cullens budgets for rehousing, resettling, educating, providing jobs, etc for 10,000+ people.
Can you enlighten?
I think we would be at a stretch to take 10,000+ people for resettlement.
September 2nd, 2008 at 8:24 am
Eredwen,
I don’t know who in New Zealand works on saving agricultural seeds … maybe its Agresearch? Anyhow, I’m sure someone will be doing it.
You might have heard the Svalbard seed vault called the “doomsday” vault. In fact, the main motivation for making the vault was much more mundane; seed vaults around the world occasionally get destroyed for various reasons, and the Svalbard vault is intended to be a sort of backup for these cases. For example, the Philippines lost their seed vault when it was flooded during a typhoon; it is certain that some crop varieties became extinct on that day. Iraq lost their seed store for reasons you can guess. In the future it is hoped that when events such as this occur, the Norwegian vault can act as a backup.
Sapient: the person presenting the seminar was not nearly as optimistic as you are about being able to adapt food crops to a changing climate (mainly because there is very little funding for this work). I can’t really comment, since I know very little about this subject beyond what I heard at the seminar.