Climate change now a UN human rights issue

Yahoo News 28 Mar 08;

Climate change is now officially a human rights issue, as the UN Human Rights Council on Friday passed a resolution on the subject, recognising that the world's poor are particularly vulnerable.

The council also gave the green light for a study into the impact of climate change on human rights, describing climate change as a "global problem .. that requires a global solution".

The resolution, submitted by the Maldives and passed without a vote, also noted that the poor tend to have limited resources to cope with the impact of global warming.

The country's Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid told AFP that climate change "violates all human rights" -- from the basic to the fundamental.

"In the case of Maldives, the right to life itself," he said.

The island state is among the world's most vulnerable states to global warming, as it risks being submerged by rising sea waters.

Shahid said Maldives appreciated various forums which have already been discussing the climate change issue.

"But the very important aspect of the human dimension is sometimes lost. Scientific and economic issues have all been taken into account," he said, adding that the country wanted to use the resolution to highlight the human dimension of the problem.

When introducing the resolution in Geneva, Maldives' representative told delegates that the debate on the subject had so far tended to focus on physical effects, while the "phenomenon on human beings" had been largely overlooked.

"It is time to highlight the human face of climate change," he said.

Supporting the resolution, Sri Lanka's representative called it "timely" and said because of climate change, even "the right to life is under threat".

The council's resolution acknowledged findings by the landmark report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which said the evidence of a human role in the warming of the planet was now "unequivocal", and that the situation could be irreversible.

It also cited those most vulnerable to the effects of climate change: low-lying and small island states; countries with low-lying coastal, arid and semi-arid areas or areas prone to floods, drought, and desertification; and developing countries with fragile mountainous ecosystems.

Greenpeace political adviser Daniel Mittler welcomed the resolution, saying that it "points to the right direction".

"We have always maintained that climate change is way more than an environment issue, it is a security issue, an economic issue - in fact it is the most important economic issue of our time, and indeed a human rights issue.

"It has a direct impact on people's lives, the ability of people to lead decent livelihoods. For example, Africans who can't farm as they used to or Alaskans who can no longer maintain their traditional lifestyle due to climate change effects."

However, he pointed out that the study proposed by the council is to be conducted "within existing resources", and said that more should be done to ensure that a thorough study be done.

"It's so ironical, if climate change is such a key issue, then countries should put more resources behind it," said Mittler.

U.N. human rights body turns to climate change
Reuters 28 Mar 08;

GENEVA (Reuters) - Climate change could erode the human rights of people living in small island states, coastal areas and parts of the world subjected to drought and floods, the U.N. Human Rights Council said on Friday.

In its first consideration of the issue, the United Nations forum's 47 member states endorsed by consensus a resolution stressing that global warming could threaten the livelihoods and welfare of many of the world's most vulnerable people.

They backed the proposal from the Maldives, Comoros, Tuvalu, Micronesia and other countries for "a detained analytical study of the relationship between climate change and human rights," to be conducted by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.

"Until now, the global discourse on climate change has tended to focus on the physical or natural impacts of climate change," Abdul Ghafoor Mohamed, the Maldives' ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, told the session.

"The immediate and far-reaching impact of the phenomenon on human beings around the world has been largely neglected," he said. "It is time to redress this imbalance by highlighting the human face of climate change."

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has made the fight against climate change one of his top priorities, and encouraged all United Nations agencies to incorporate it into their work.

International experts have warned that the expected impacts of climate change -- including rising sea levels and intense storms, droughts and floods -- could strip millions of people from access to housing, food and clean water.

But diplomats at the United Nations have not yet sought to enshrine the right to protection from the effects of climate change in an international treaty, as has been done for other social and economic rights.

Louise Arbour, a former Canadian Supreme Court justice, has announced she will not seek another term as U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights when her tenure ends on June 30. Her successor has not yet been named.

(Reporting by Laura MacInnis)