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Building Energy Efficiency and Sustainability
News Release from: CIWEM | Subject: UN's Human Rights Day
Edited by the Buildingtalk Editorial
Team on 04 December 2007
Climate change affects human rights say
CIWEM
Climate change is violating the fundamental human right to a safe, secure and sustainable environment and the effects are falling disproportionately on developing countries.
CIWEM wants the UN's Human Rights Day on 10th December to recognise this vital connection Climate change highlights the interaction between economic development, environmental degradation and social inequity
This article was originally published on Buildingtalk on 1 Sep 2005 at 8.00am (UK)
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Industrialised countries are responsible for half of the global carbon dioxide emissions but only 15 percent of the population.
Ninety-eight percent of those affected by climate change between 2000 and 2004 lived in the developing world.
CIWEM believes that climate change is a human rights issue, which undermines the ability of developing countries to implement social reforms and damages the long term health and culture of entire societies.
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Climate 'shocks' such as droughts, floods or hurricanes force the poor to adopt emergency measures, which result in reduced nutrition, withdrawal from schools, cuts in healthcare investment or forced migration.
CIWEM supports the Inuit petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which links the thinning of sea-ice, the erosion of shorelines and the depletion of species with climate change.
CIWEM also supports the Alliance of Small Island States' concerns about rising sea levels which are leading them to present a resolution saying that climate change is a threat to human rights at the UN climate change conference in Bali.
CIWEM believes that we must take responsibility for our actions.
The UN's latest annual report on human development and climate change says that rich nations need to cut emissions by at least 80 percent, with developing nations cutting around 20 percent.
CIWEM Executive Director, Nick Reeves, urges the Prime Minister to take up the challenge: "In his first green speech as Prime Minister, Gordon Brown promised to take difficult decisions for action on climate change".
"This latest report from the UN calls on Britain and other developed countries to take urgent steps to prevent global warming from causing irrevocable damage that would hurt the world's poor and most vulnerable".
"Mr Brown now has his chance to show that he really can take those tough decisions".
"In the interests of human rights, as well as the environment, will the Prime Minister heed the report and begin with a review of existing government policies and plans that we know are contributing, or will contribute, to climate change, such as airport expansion, road building and development that breaches ecological limits? Will his Government do more on renewable energy - as the UN asks - and take note that it can no longer exclude shipping and aviation from the UK's target for reducing greenhouse gases and be taken seriously by the public on climate change?".
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