In less than ten days world leaders will be gathering at the United Nations in New York for the Climate Action Summit. Their goal is simple; to increase ambition and accelerate action in the face of a mounting climate emergency.

For many this means ambition and action that enables countries to decarbonize their economies by the middle of the century. But that is only half the equation. Equally ambitious plans are also needed to build the resilience of vulnerable sectors and communities being battered by climate related disasters of increasing frequency, intensity and unpredictability.

Nowhere is this reality starker than in the Asia Pacific region which has suffered another punishing year of devastation due to extreme events linked to climate change. Last year Kerala state in India had its worst floods in a century. The floods in Iran in April this year were unprecedented. Floods and heatwaves in quick succession in Japan caused widespread destruction and loss of life. In several South Asian countries, immediately following a period of drought, weeks of heavy monsoon rains this month unleashed floods and landslides. Across North-east and South Asia, record high temperatures have been set.

The latest research from the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific has shown that intense heatwaves and drought are becoming more frequent; unusual tropical cyclones originate from beyond the traditional risk zones and follow tracks that have not been seen before; and unprecedented floods and occurring throughout the region. The science tells us that the impacts are only going to increase in severity and frequency as greenhouse gas emissions concentrations in the atmosphere continue to rise.

The poor and vulnerable are taking the biggest hit. Disasters cost lives and damage livelihood and assets. Increases in disaster exposure are increasing child malnutrition and mortality and forcing poor families to take children out of school – entrenching inter-generational poverty. And they perpetuate inequalities within and between countries. A person in the Pacific small island developing states is 3 to 5 times more at risk of disasters than a person elsewhere in our disaster-prone region. Vanuatu has faced annual losses of over 20% of its GDP. In Southeast Asia, Lao, Cambodia and Viet Nam have all faced losses of more than 5% of their GDP. In short, disasters are slowing down and often reversing poverty reduction and widening inequality.

But amidst this cycle of disaster and vulnerability lies a golden opportunity for careful and forward-looking investment. The Global Commission on Adaptation recently found that there would be over $7 trillion in total net benefits between now and 2030 from investing in early warning systems, climate-resilient infrastructure, improved dryland agriculture, mangrove protection, and in making water resources more resilient could generate.

So where could countries in the Asia Pacific region make a start? First, by providing people with the means to overcome shocks. Increasing social protection is a good start. Currently developing countries in Asia and the Pacific only spend about 3.7 per cent of GDP on social protection, compared to the world average of 11.2 per cent, leaving people vulnerable in case they get sick, lose their jobs, become old or are hit by a disaster. In the aftermath of Typhoon Hyan in the Philippines we saw effectiveness of social protection, especially cash transfers, but these were only possible because the government could use the conditional cash transfer system and mechanism already in place for poor and vulnerable people.

Second by lifting the financial burden off the poor. Disaster risk finance and insurance can cover poor and vulnerable people from climate shocks and help them recover from disaster, such as Mongolia’s index-based insurance scheme to deal with the increased frequency of “dzuds” where combination of droughts and shortage of pasture lead to massive livestock deaths. Disaster risk finance can also help countries pool the risks as is happening through the emerging ASEAN Disaster Risk Financing and Insurance programme.

Third by increasing investment in new technologies and big data. Artificial Intelligence driven risk analytics as well as fast combination of sensor and geospatial data, can strengthen early warning systems. Big data, including from mobile phones, can help identify and locate vulnerable populations in risk hotspots who have been the hardest to reach so far, ensuring faster more targeted help after disasters. Experience around the region has already shown the potential. In India, a combination of automated risk analytics, geospatial data and the digital identity system (the so called AADHARR system) have helped to identify and deliver assistance to millions of drought-affected subsistence farmers. But much more investment in needed to make technology an integral part of disaster risk response and resilience building.

Climate related disasters are likely to increase in Asia Pacific. This is our new climate reality. The Summit provides the perfect platform to make the commitments needed for helping communities and people to adapt to this reality before decades of hard-won development gains are washed away.

Kaveh Zahedi is Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

The past five years have been the hottest on record in Asia and the Pacific. Unprecedented heatwaves have swept across our region, cascading into slow onset disasters such as drought. Yet heat is only part of the picture. Tropical cyclones have struck new, unprepared parts of our region and devastatingly frequent floods have ensued. In Iran, these affected 10 million people this year and displaced 500,000 of which half were children. Bangladesh is experiencing its fourth wave of flooding in 2019. Last year, the state of Kerala in India faced the worst floods in a century.

This is the new climate reality in Asia and the Pacific. The scale of forecast economic losses for the region is sobering. Including slow-onset disasters, average annualised losses until 2030 are set to quadruple to about $675 billion compared to previous estimates. This represents 2.4 percent of the region’s GDP. Economic losses of such magnitude will undermine both economic growth and our region’s efforts to reduce poverty and inequality, keeping children out of schools and adults of work. Basic health services will be undermined, crops destroyed and food security jeopardised. If we do not act now, Asia-Pacific’s poorest communities will be among the worst affected.

Four areas of Asia and the Pacific are particularly impacted, hotspots which combine vulnerability to climate change, poverty and disaster risk. In transboundary river basins in South and South-East Asia such as the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna river basin, floods alternate with prolonged droughts. In South-East Asia and East and North-East Asia earthquakes, tsunamis and landslides threaten poor populations in the Pacific Ring of Fire. Intensifying sand and dust storms are blighting East, Central and South-west Asia. Vulnerable populations in Pacific Small Islands Developing States are five times more at risk of disasters than a person in South and South-East Asia. Many countries’ sustainable development prospects are now directly dependent on their exposure to natural disasters and their ability to build resilience.

Yet this vicious cycle between poverty, inequalities and disasters is not inevitable. It can be broken if an integrated approach is taken to investing in social and disaster resilience policies. As disasters disproportionately affect the poor, building resilience must include investment in social protection as the most effective means of reducing poverty. Conditional cash transfer systems can be particularly effective as was shown in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. Increasing pre-arranged risk finance and climate risk insurance is also crucial. While investments needed are significant, in most countries these are equivalent to less than half the costs forecast to result from natural disasters.

The use of technological innovations to protect the region from natural disasters must go hand in hand with these investments. Big data reveal patterns and associations between complex disaster risks and predict extreme weather and slow onset disasters to improve the readiness of our economies and our societies. In countries affected by typhoons, big data applications can make early warning systems stronger and can contribute to saving lives and reducing damage. China and India are leading the way in using technology to warn people of impending disasters, make their infrastructure more resilient and deliver targeted assistance to affected farmers and citizens.

Asia and the Pacific can learn from this best practice and multilateral cooperation is the way to give scale to our region’s disaster resilience effort. With this ambition in mind, representatives from countries across the region are meeting in Bangkok this week at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) to explore regional responses to natural disasters. Their focus will include strengthening Asia-Pacific’s Disaster Resilience Network and capitalising on innovative technology applications for the benefit of the broader region. This is our opportunity to replicate successes, accelerate drought mitigation strategies and develop a regional sand and dust storm alert system. I hope the region can seize it to protect vulnerable communities from disaster risk in every corner of Asia and the Pacific.

Ms. Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

]]> https://eveningreport.nz/2019/05/27/torres-strait-islanders-in-un-challenge-over-australian-climate-rights-abuses/ Sun, 26 May 2019 23:15:53 +0000 https://eveningreport.nz/2019/05/27/torres-strait-islanders-in-un-challenge-over-australian-climate-rights-abuses/

By Kristen Lyons of the University of Queensland

Climate change threatens Australia in many different ways, and can devastate rural and urban communities alike. For Torres Strait Islanders, it is a crisis that is washing away their homes, infrastructure and even cemeteries.

The failure to take action on this crisis has led a group of Torres Strait Islanders to lodge a climate change case with the United Nations Human Rights Committee against the Australian federal government.

It is the first time the Australian government has been taken to the UN for their failure to take action on climate change. And its the first time people living on a low lying island have taken action against any government.

READ MORE: Big week for climate action rallies and democracy

This case – and other parallel cases – demonstrate that climate change is “fundamentally a human rights issue”, with First Nations most vulnerable to the brunt of a changing climate.

The group of Torres Strait Islanders lodging this appeal argue that the Australian government has failed to take adequate action on climate change. They allege that the re-elected Coalition government has not only steered Australia off track in meeting globally agreed emissions reductions, but has set us on course for climate catastrophe.

In doing so, Torres Strait Islanders argue that the government has failed to uphold human rights obligations and violated their rights to culture, family and life.

The video Our islands, Our Home. Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples should be aware that this video may contain the images, voices and names of people who have died. This film was shot on location on the islands of Zenadth Kes (Torres Strait) in Australia. Video: 350 Australia

This case is a show of defiance in the face of Australia’s years of political inertia and turmoil over climate change.

It is the first time people living on a low-lying island – acutely vulnerable in the face of rising sea levels – have brought action against a government. But it may also be a sign of things to come, as more small island nations face impending climate change threats.

Breaching multiple human rights obligations
Driving this case is an alliance of eight Torres Strait Islanders, represented by the Torres Strait land and sea council, Gur A Baradharaw Kod, along with a legal team from ClientEarth and 350.org. They argue that their way of life has come under immediate and irreversible threat.

On this basis, they accuse the Australian government of breaching multiple articles of the UN Human Rights Declaration, including the right to culture, the right to be free from arbitrary interference with privacy, family and home, and the right to life.

In the early 1990s, the Torres Strait Islands were at the centre of struggles to secure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land rights in Australia.

Securing these rights were made possible through the historic Mabo Decision, and these rights remain central to land and human rights debates today as Torres Strait Islanders’ land and seas are threatened by climate change.

Torres Straight islanders on the frontlines
Some Torres Strait Islands are less than one metre above sea level and are already affected by climate change.

Rising tides have delivered devastating effects for local communities, including flooding homes, land and cultural sites, with dire flooding in 2018 breaking a sea wall built to protect local communities.

Increasing sea temperatures have also affected marine environments, driving coral bleaching and ocean acidification, and disrupting habitat for dugong, salt water crocodiles, and multiple species of turtle.

In the same way settler colonial violence dispossessed First Nations people from their ancestral homelands, climate change presents a real threat of further forced removal of people from their land and seas, alongside destruction of places where deep cultural and spiritual meaning is derived.

Parallel threats across the Pacific
While the Torres Strait appeal to the UN is groundbreaking, the challenges facing Torres Strait Islanders are not unique.

Delegates at the Pacific Islands Forum in Fiji last week described climate change as the “single greatest threat” to the region, with sea level rise occurring up to four times the global average in some countries in the Pacific.

Climate change is already causing migration across parts of the Pacific, including relocation of families from the Carteret Islands to Bougainville with support from local grassroots organisation Tulele Peisa.

The Alliance of Small Island States, an intergovernmental organisation, has demanded that signatories to the Paris Agreement, including through the Green Climate Fund, recognise fundamental loss and damages communities are facing, and compensate those affected.

Growing wave of climate litigation
Across the Torres Strait, the Pacific, and other regions on the frontline of climate change, there are a diversity of responses in defence of land and seas. These are often grounded in local and Indigenous knowledge.

They show the resolve of First Nations and local communities, as captured in a message from the Pacific Climate Warriors:

We are not drowning. We are fighting.

There are parallel appeals to the Torres Strait Islanders’ case. Around the world, First Nations people are calling on the UN to hold national governments to account on human rights obligations, including in the context of mining and other developments that drive greenhouse gas emissions.

In Australia, Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners have submitted multiple appeals, including last year alleging government violations of six international human rights obligations in their effort to advance Adani’s proposed Carmichael mine.

There is an array of other climate litigation underway. This includes citizens suing their governments for failing to take action on climate, such as in the Netherlands, where a judge ordered the government to take hefty action to reduce national emissions.

Similarly, a group of 21 children in the United States are pursuing a lawsuit to demand the right to a safe climate.

Given the parlous state of climate politics in Australia, further litigation can be expected. The significance of the current appeal by a group of Torres Strait Islanders lies in its potential to lay bare the adequacy or otherwise of Australia’s response to climate change as a human rights issue.

First Nations people already have a moral authority in defending their human rights in the era of climate change. Over time, they and others, including children, will also test the grounds on which they might have the legal authority to do so.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By RNZ Pacific

The UN Secretary General António Guterres has praised Fiji as a strong committed partner in peacekeeping and for taking a leading role in the battle against climate change.

Guterres was speaking after formal talks with Fijian Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama today.

Guterres said it needec to be recognised the battle was not being won for the commitments made in Paris to be respected and there needed to be much stronger political will to rescue the planet.

READ MORE: UN Secretary-General tells youth ‘be noisy as possible’ on climate change

There was nowhere better than the Pacific to feel the moral duty to rally the international community, he said.

“The prime minister was telling me in the meeting we just had, that climate change corresponds to the battle of our lives from the point of view of Fiji and the Pacific.

“As secretary-general of the United Nations, I have many battles but I have no doubt to say that as a grandfather this is also the battle of my life.”

Guterres side-stepped a reporter’s question on whether human rights issues were discussed with the Fijian prime minister, saying Fiji’s progress is being discussed during the Universal Periodic Review process at the UN Human Rights Council.

Running out of time
Earlier, Pacific Island leaders asked the UN Secretary-General to tell the world their region was running out of time.

At a meeting yesterday in Fiji, leaders from countries in the Pacific Islands Forum said climate change was the single greatest threat to their region.

In a statement, the leaders welcomed Guterres to witness the everyday reality of climate change and to drive momentum in the lead up to his Climate Action Summit in September.

“After meeting today, we will return to our island homes. Some of us will find our villages inundated by waves and our homes and public infrastructure wrecked by cyclones. Our coral reefs are dying, our food is disappearing, and we fear for the safety of our loved ones, who are being injured and even killed by some of the most ferocious of cyclones and other extreme weather events ever witnessed in our region,” the statement said.

“Let us together seize the opportunity of the UNSG’s Climate Action Summit to make the changes we need to reverse climate change.”

They said all countries attending the summit must agree to reduce global emissions, and to mitigation and adaption support for countries that needed it.

Without agreement, the leaders said people of the Pacific would continue to lose their homes, their ways of life and their livelihoods.

Message to polluters
“To the major polluters – our today in the Pacific is undoubtedly your tomorrow.

“Sea level rise in Tuvalu is sea level rise in New York, though one might go under before the other.”

António Guterres acknowledged the message from Pacific leaders, saying he stood with them in calling for climate action.

“The Pacific has a unique moral authority to speak out. It is time for the world to listen,” he said.

This article is published under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

Amnesty International today warned that the failure of governments to tackle climate change could amount to the greatest inter-generational human rights violation in history. a

The London-based rights organisation welcomed a global day of school strikes against climate change planned for tomorrow by young people.

“Amnesty International stands with all children and young people who are organising and taking part in school strikes for climate action,” said Amnesty International’s secretary-general Kumi Naidoo.

READ MORE: Students striking from school for a safe climate future

This is an important social justice movement that is mobilising thousands of people to peacefully call on governments to stop climate change.

“It is unfortunate that children have to sacrifice days of learning in school to demand that adults do the right thing.

-Partners-

“However, they know the consequences of the current shameful inaction both for themselves and future generations. This should be a moment for stark self-reflection by our political class.

“Instead of criticising young people for taking part in these protests, like some misguided politicians have done, we should be asking why governments are getting away with playing truant on climate action.”

Devastating impacts
Amnesty International warned that climate change was having and would have even more devastating impacts on human rights unless governments acted now to change course.

Climate change especially affects people who are already vulnerable, disadvantaged or subject to discrimination, the organisation said.

“Children especially are more vulnerable to climate-related impacts, due to their specific metabolism, physiology and developmental needs,” Amnesty said in a statement.

“Climate change also poses a risk to their mental health; children exposed to traumatic events such as natural disasters, exacerbated by climate change, can suffer from post-traumatic stress disorders.”

Naidoo said: “Climate change is a human rights issue precisely because of the impact it is having on people. It compounds and magnifies existing inequalities, and it is children who will grow up to see its increasingly frightening effects.

“The fact that most governments have barely lifted a finger in response to our mutually assured destruction amounts to one of the greatest inter-generational human rights violations in history.”

Millions of people are already suffering from its catastrophic effects – from prolonged drought in sub-Saharan Africa to devastating tropical storms sweeping across South-east Asia and the Caribbean.

Devastating heatwaves
During the summer months for the northern hemisphere in 2018, communities from the Arctic Circle to Greece, Japan, Pakistan and the USA experienced devastating heatwaves and wildfires that killed and injured hundreds of people.

“Children are often told they are ‘tomorrow’s leaders’. But if they wait until ‘tomorrow’ there may not be a future in which to lead. Young people are putting their leaders to shame with the passion and determination they are showing to fight this crucial battle now,”  Naidoo said.

The latest pledges made by governments to mitigate climate change— which are yet to be implemented—are completely inadequate as they would lead to a catastrophic 3°C increase in average global temperatures over pre-industrial levels by 2100.

Amnesty International calls on states to scale up climate action substantially and to do so in a manner consistent with human rights.

One of the crucial ways this can happen is if people most affected by climate change, such as children and young people, are engaged in efforts to address and mitigate climate change, while being provided with the necessary information and education to participate meaningfully in such discussions, and included in decision-making that directly affects them.

“Every day that we allow climate change to get worse ultimately makes it harder to stop and reverse its catastrophic effects. There is nothing stopping governments from doing everything in their power to reduce greenhouse gas emissions within the shortest possible time-frame.

“There is nothing stopping them from finding ways to halve emissions from their 2010 levels by 2030, and to net-zero by 2050, as climate scientists have called for,” said Naidoo.

“The only thing standing in the way of protecting humanity from climate change is the fact that our leaders lack the political will and have barely tried. Politicians can keep making excuses for their inaction, but nature does not negotiate. They must listen to young people and take steps today to stop climate change, because the alternative is unthinkable.”

#Strike4Climate

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz