Climate Change - An Issue of Human Rights?

December 7, 2003 – Vol.8 No.37

CLIMATE CHANGE - AN ISSUE OF HUMAN RIGHTS?

If climate change is affecting a long-standing, traditional way of life as well as the health and safety of a whole society, shouldn’t action be taken to mitigate the problem?

The 155,000 Inuit people living on the front lines of climate change in Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Chukota in the Far East of the Russian Federation, claim that drastic changes in climate are affecting their way of life and economies as well as their personal safety. To them inaction by government is a violation of their human rights, their right to exist in a safe and stable environment.

As cold and harsh as the Arctic may seem to rest of the world it is home to the Inuit. For them an already-warming Arctic has caused the weather to become unpredictable, has turned once-safe-for-travel-upon sea ice into a deadly hazard and has damaged structures as the now melting tundra, once solid footing for buildings, gives way beneath them. Wildlife, too, which is also food on the table for the Inuit, has suffered as the sea ice melts. Sea ice is part of the protective habitat of polar bears and seals.

Representing the Inuit people, the Inuit Circumpolar Conference made its case at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Milan, Italy. The group is considering legal action and is exploring the 1948 American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man as way to force nations, including the United States, to take action on climate change.

Also from Milan, the World Health Organization issued report - Climate Change and Human Health, Risks and Responses - showing that 150,000 people died in 2000 of climate change and 20,000 died this year in Europe alone as an unprecedented heat wave struck the continent.

And OPEC nations had a voice at Milan, too. The oil-exporting-dependent nations that would be economically damaged from a switch away from fossil fuels said that they would need help if the world were to shift to renewables. True, the OPEC nations should get assistance - though not necessarily financial - to build sustainable economies around their crude oil reserves utilizing hydrocarbons for purposes other than fuel.

Visit the Inuit Circumpolar Conference at http://www.inuitcircumpolar.com/ and for the World Health Organization report at http://www.who.int/ .