Children wade
through a mangrove swamp covered with crude oil on their way home from fishing
October 14, 2004 in Goi, Nigeria. (Photo: Jacob Silberberg/Getty Images)
Amnesty Says
Paltry G7 Climate Plans 'A Devastating, Mass-Scale Assault on Human Rights'
"These are not administrative failures, they are a
devastating, mass-scale assault on human rights."
June
7, 2021
"The
unambitious climate plans submitted by G7 members represent a violation of the
human rights of billions of people. These are not administrative failures, they
are a devastating, mass-scale assault on human rights," said Chiara Liguori,
Amnesty International's Human Rights and Environment policy advisor, in a
statement Sunday.
"[G7] governments must commit to unconditionally
phasing out all fossil fuels, as close to 2030 as is technically
feasible." —Chiara Liguori, Amnesty International
Liguori's stern
assessment came alongside the release of Stop Burning Our
Rights (pdf), a new policy brief from the
organization that calls the climate emergency "a human rights crisis of
unprecedented proportions" and "manifestation of deep-rooted
injustices."
Looking through
lens of government's human rights obligations, the paper says that wealthier
nations—who disproportionately fueled the climate crisis—must be at the
forefront of climate action to reach net zero emission. Criticizing targets of
net zero by 2050 as "too little, too late," the policy brief further
calls on wealthy nations to take greater action to finance developing
countries' climate target, through grants, not loans, and fund remedies for
climate harms that have already happened.
The devastating
impacts from climate crisis-fueled extreme weather events are already clear,
and global governments committed to a goal of keeping global warming within
1.5° compared to pre-industrial levels, Amnesty says. Carbon emissions from
fossil fuels rose 1% annually between 2010 and 2018, the report adds, and,
while the coronavirus pandemic triggered a downward blip in emissions, the IEA
projected a rise of 4.8% in 2021. What's more, some governments gave pandemic
money given with no strings attached to fossil fuel companies.
And yet many
governments, though their climate plans, are putting human rights including the
rights to life, water, food, housing, health, a healthy environment, and
self-determination at huge risk, the publication says.
"While a slew
of new 2030 and carbon-neutrality targets have recently been announced, most
countries—especially wealthier states that are members of the G20—are currently
failing to adopt sufficiently ambitious and human rights-consistent climate
plans that would contribute to avoiding the worst human rights impacts of
climate change," the paper states.
Failure to take
necessary steps to rein in the global crisis and mitigate its harms amounts to
"a human rights violation" and should be condemned as with other
human rights violations, according to the group.
Such violations,
the report argues, "condemn millions of people to premature death, hunger,
diseases, displacement, not just in the future but also at present. They
contribute to conflicts and to the unfolding cycle of human rights violations.
They perpetuate and accelerate current inequalities and discrimination against those
who are already being oppressed by systemic injustices. Failure to adequately
tackle the climate crisis is a form of discrimination."
The paper lays out
a number of recommendations to keep warming below 1.5°C above pre-industrial
levels and support human rights obligations. They include that governments
revise their national climate plans; immediately stop to fossil fuel expansion;
overhaul food systems such that "unsustainable and exploitative"
systems are left behind in favor of ones that promote human rights and
sustainable systems; enact policies to end deforestation by 2030; end subsidies
of fossil fuels as well as those for forest biomass and crop-based biofuels;
and implement climate action-centered Covid-19 recovery plans.
Wealthy nations
must also commit to stopping fossil fuel expansion in other countries, lest
they simply shift where the polluting extraction and refining operations occur.
Simply put,
"States that are failing to phase out fossil fuels in a timeline aligned
with the 1.5°C imperative and with their respective capabilities are violating
human rights." The paper adds that corporations and their financial
backers that fail to shift from fossil fuel operations must be held accountable
for their human rights abuses.
The demands were
delivered a day before NOAA and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the
University of California San Diego announced that the monthly average of CO2
levels in May hit 419 parts per million, the highest level since measurements
began over six decades ago. The paper also came just ahead of the G7 Leaders'
Summit, which begins Friday in the U.K. and where, according to Amnesty's Liguori,
leaders must commit to urgent climate action.
"The G7 and
other wealthy industrialized countries have historically emitted the most
carbon and bear the greatest responsibility for the current climate crisis.
They also have the most resources to tackle it," she said, "but their
strategies to date have been woefully inadequate, and their support for other
countries has been stingy."
"At the G7
Leaders' Summit, governments must commit to unconditionally phasing out all
fossil fuels, as close to 2030 as is technically feasible. They must put in
place tough regulations requiring businesses to shift to renewable energy, and
stop using our taxes to subsidize the deadly fossil fuel industry," she
said.
Our
work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to
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Donations can be sent
to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206,
Baltimore, MD 21212. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at]
comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
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