Quarterly Bulletin

Climate change is presently receiving a lot of attention. This attention is based on scientific evidence as well as social evidence of the devastating effects of climate change. The consequences of climate change are bad not only to eco-systems but also to human beings. Since provision of most human rights are based on environmental goods, the way climate change is happening violates human rights. Shay Cullen explores this relationship by believing that climate change is not just a scientific problem, not just an economic problem, but a matter of international justice.

Global warming due to the excessive emissions of industrial CO2, the destruction of the tropical rain forests and the release of methane from the melting permafrost of Siberia is melting the Ice Mountains of the Arctic and Greenland and huge blocks of Antarctica. The inevitable result is more water in the oceans that rise to cover our precious beaches and coastal lands. Good-bye to millions of beach houses, fishing villages, salt ponds, rice growing deltas and the homes of millions.

There are other consequences too. Millions of displaced people will struggle for food, water and living space and migrate west to the lands of low populations and high surplus  food production. This will cause more conflict and even wars. Sounds like a Biblical prophecy of doom and gloom? It is the coming reality based on the indisputable scientific facts gathered over the past twenty years and even before. We are fast reaching a tipping point, the point of no return. The process cannot be slowed or halted.

Global warming will accelerate as one threatening change contributes to an even greater one. A threatening spiral of disasters have prompted law makers from developing nations to meet in Manila October 2008 and consider what can be done to be better prepared for the worst.

Sen. Loren Legarda, co-convener of the meeting called on the rich nations to help prepare the developing nations to be ready to cope with the rapidly approaching “cycle of catastrophe and tragedy.” The meeting’s declaration said “Industrialized countries have a historical responsibility for climate change and are morally obliged to financially and technologically assist developing countries in their efforts to reduce their vulnerability and adapt to its consequences, while reducing their own greenhouse gas emissions,”

According to OneWorld, a UK charity, "Research by the UK-based International Institute for Environment and Development shows that the 100 countries most vulnerable to climate change together account for just 3.2% of global carbon dioxide emissions.”

So once again it is the poor who are suffering for the irresponsibility of the rich and will continue to do so. The effects of global warming will cause the poor untold hardship, deprivation and great social upheavals. The wealthy nations that are causing the problem in the first place have a grave responsibility to alleviate these consequences.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has taken up this issue of social injustice caused by climate change and is examining the relations between climate change and the violation of human rights. Kate Raworth has produced a report for Oxfam, a UK development and relief organization, that says "Climate change was first seen as a scientific problem, then an economic one. Now it is becoming a matter of international justice."

There is no legal way as yet for the poor nations  to   challenge these polluters and destroyers of the environment. There may have to be a special international court of climate change settlements established to hold the polluters to account. Until then we have to continue to lobby and campaign for the rich industrial nations to set the goal of an 80% cut in CO2 emissions by the year 2050 and not settle for the lower 50% cut they envisage.

In the Philippine Archipelago, millions are vulnerable to the rise in global temperature since the rise in ocean levels will cover islands and wipe out coastal villages. Now is the time to establish a global fund that can meet this challenge. We can all do something positive that will help make this a cleaner and better, and, hopefully, less polluted world than it currently is.

Fr. Shay Cullen, MSC
Preda Foundation
Philippines