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- Climate Change and Human Rights
OAS Approves Human Rights and Climate Change Resolution
Medellín Colombia - June 4th, 2008 – At the close of the 38th Annual General Assembly of the Organization of American States, the representatives of the hemisphere approved a resolution calling for deepening our understanding of the links between evolving climate change and the implications it has on the capacity of individuals and communities to realize their human rights.
Resolution AG/Res 2429 on Human Rights and Climate Change in the Americas (full text below), adopted yesterday, brings climate change and its impacts fully into the political agenda of the hemisphere’s key human rights and environmental agencies, and opens the way for the development of a regional platform to deepen State’s understanding of climate change and its impacts, identify priorities and potential solutions, and allow for more effective and informed engagement in global negotiations on climate change.
The resolution draws attention to the impacts that climate change has on sustainable development and expresses concern for “the consequences it could have for the full enjoyment of human rights”, calling for the hemisphere’s human rights and environmental agencies to inform the States on such impacts.
Argentina presented the resolution for consideration to the OAS recently, concerned that climate change inequitably impacts developing countries, and places vulnerable communities at greater risk, effectively hindering their development opportunities, weakening human rights guarantees for individuals and communities, and placing undue strains on many climate vulnerable States which will have to introduce climate protection programs to ensure that they are meeting their human rights protection obligations.
A human rights perspective, examining the barriers that climate change presents to social and economic development and human rights realization, would offer a critical knowledge to climate vulnerable States which are engaged in global talks on climate change but which have been largely sideline observers in discussions about reducing emissions. Climate polluters have refused to agree on emissions reduction and are also reluctant to commit to paying for the social and economic impacts they are causing to some of the world’s most climate-vulnerable communities.
The Argentine government is leading an important push within global negotiations on climate change to focus negotiations more on adaptation and mitigation, which include policy, plans and action to address communities suffering the consequences of climate change, as well as the immediate need to secure the transfer of modern technologies such as renewable energies (and the accompanying financing), to developing countries, to ensure more efficient, and less contaminating energy security, but also to protect the lives of the most vulnerable groups affected by climate change.
The resolution calls on States and the hemisphere’s agencies to “pursue and step up the efforts being made from within the OAS to counter the adverse effects of climate change, and to build resilience and the capacity to adapt to the phenomenon of climate change among vulnerable states and populations.” It also engages the hemisphere’s principle human rights body, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Department of Sustainable Development, to work collaboratively on this agenda, and integrate their work with the efforts taking place globally through UN agencies such as the Human Rights Council, the IPCC, civil society, and others.
Winston Williams, Ambassador of Antigua and Barbuda to the OAS, spoke yesterday to the OAS Plenary meeting that approved the resolution and said, “Inaction is no longer a viable option. The way forward is clear, we must take steps to reduce our vulnerability to climate change particularly in our region’s least developed countries. Climate change poses a clear and present danger to every country in this hemisphere and we can no longer afford to sit back and do nothing.“
Romina Picolotti, Argentina’s Environment Secretary, who is now in Oslo meeting with heads of State in global climate talks, and whose team along with the Argentine foreign ministry staff, drafted the original resolution presented to the OAS General Assembly, was glad to receive the news and indicated, “it’s time we develop a regional agenda to address the most vulnerable groups affected by a problem we did not create and this resolution paves the way for an important beginning to achieve that goal”.
For more information:
jdtaillant@cedha.org.ar
tel: +54 9 6 729 5466
