Climate replacement and environmental destruction are central to the human rights movement.
Droughts, toxic pollution, water shortages, desertification, severe storms and similar events affected the lives of millions of people around the world last year, according to Amnesty International’s annual report on the state of human rights in the world covering 2023.
In Lithrougha, an area devastated by conflict, Storm Daniel, likely intensified by climate change, destroyed two dams under the onslaught of the waters, displacing more than 40,000 people and killing thousands more. In Azerbaijan, security forces carried out a brutal crackdown on peaceful protesters. protesting against the installation of a tailings dam near their community. And wildfires in Canada devastated an area roughly the length of Minnesota, damaging homes, forcing another 150,000 people to evacuate and releasing smoke that affected air quality hundreds of miles away in cities. from New York to Pittsburgh.
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These are just a few of the dozens of effects documented in Amnesty International’s report, which has traditionally focused on movements of despotic regimes, armed clashes and poverty.
But the report released last month looked for the first time at countries’ ability to uphold the right to a healthy environment, which the United Nations General Assembly unanimously identified in July 2022. This popularity is part of a broader trend towards the understanding that environmental issues and human rights are intertwined: human health, access to food and water, the ability to earn a living, and to start a family circle, all of which have a healthy environment.
Marta Schaaf, Amnesty International’s Director of Climate, Economic and Social Justice and Corporate Responsibility, said the report’s findings show that the environment and climate significantly affect other people in all countries and disproportionately harm marginalised groups.
This includes Myanmar’s Rohingya communities, who have been displaced for more than a decade due to the fighting and confined to ruined camps in Rakhine State. When Category Five Cyclone Mocha hit the region in May 2023, an estimated 3. 4 million other people were affected. Vulnerable: Those who survived the loss of a family member and had limited access to physical care, education, food, water and sanitation. Today, 90% of the country’s youth are exposed to environmental and climate risks, ranging from floods and cyclones to heat waves, air pollutants, and lead exposure.
The Rohingya are not the only ones facing overlapping threats. Last year, floods, droughts, intense heat and other weather-exacerbated occasions affected poor communities in Pakistan, Malawi, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, France and the United States. States.
However, all governments have the capacity and resources to respond to such shocks in a way that meets the fundamental desires of citizens.
“If you’re in a Caribbean country and you’re faced with weather events after weather events, this affects the government’s bank account and makes it difficult to ensure some rights coverage beyond rights harmed by weather events,” Schaaf said.
The report urges developed countries to “urgently increase climate finance” for low-income countries to adapt to climate changes and provide more investment for damages caused by climate-related events. The idea behind those calls is that richer countries have, in general, traditionally contributed the maximum greenhouse fuel emissions and thus become richer, while poorer countries have emitted few emissions and at the same time suffered some of the worst effects of global warming.
Before Covid-19, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development stated that for the world’s least evolved countries to achieve the global Sustainable Development Goals, around $1 trillion per year would be needed. This figure is very likely higher than after the pandemic.
Since 2009, evolved countries participating in global climate negotiations have agreed to allocate $100 billion each year to emerging countries to reduce their emissions and adapt to climate impacts. But the mobilized budget never reached this figure: in 2021, the amount transferred was 89 dollars. For reference, the United States has spent more than $2 trillion on the war in Afghanistan, and one estimate puts the cost of the war in Ukraine for Russia at $211 billion.
Amnesty International’s report highlights that throughout 2023, some of the largest historical, existing and consistent per capita emitters, together with the United States, China and Canada, have developed fossil fuel projects that contribute to climate replacement and have an effect on the environment. In 2022, the structure of coal-fired power plants in China was six times larger than that of the rest of the world combined. according to the report.
Australia, another high-emitting country, also expanded its coal mining projects last year, while Japan is listed as the only industrialized country that has not committed to phasing out coal-fired electricity. The United States, the world’s largest longtime emitter, produced more crude oil than any other country in the world in 2023, a six-year trend.
Schaaf said that when it comes to finance, which she considers a human rights issue, it is vital to take into account wealth disparities between and within countries.
“We want to emphasize that when we talk about legacy emitters, the duty to convert the habit should not fall on ordinary people,” Schaaf said. “It’s not about the middle and current categories paying more taxes to finance the climate. We want to keep an eye on the corporations and Americans who have caused the climate crisis and we can contribute to it: polluters deserve to pay. ”
The report also strongly highlights the growing threats to environmental defenders, who are others who act peacefully against nature and their homes in the face of environmental degradation.
Honduras is by far one of the most dangerous countries for those fleeing to protect their land, water, and air from pollution. Between 2012 and 2022, at least 131 murders of environmental defenders took place there. Last July, in the Guapinol del Norte Honduras network, three other people from the same family were shot dead after campaigning against an iron mine that had infected the Guapinol and San Pedro rivers, on which many other people in the network depend for their drinking water, agriculture and subsistence fishing. . .
The report also highlights incidents in the Philippines in which two environmental defenders were forcibly disappeared and two other environmentalists were designated as terrorists and charged with perjury in 2023.
Amnesty International has known Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador and Mexico as harmful countries for environmental defenders.
Schaaf said the number of documented attacks on environmental defenders around the world is likely underestimated. China, Russia, and other repressive states severely limit the activity of vigilante groups. Last year, the Russian government classified two major environmental nonprofits as “undesirable” and banned them. prevent them from operating in the country.
The health and livelihoods of other people around the world have been affected by large-scale extractive projects, such as drilling and oil and fuel exploitation, the report says.
One example cited occurred in the Gobi region of Mongolia, in the coal and minerals sector, where nomadic pastoralist communities have suffered for years from harmful air, water and soil pollutants while wasting territory for mining projects. Some of the mining corporations operating in the Gobi region hail from rich Western countries, in addition to Canada.
“States have continuously ignored the effects of extractive industries on the environment and on indigenous peoples and other affected communities,” the report says.
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In a segment focused on the United States, the report notes that the country was the largest exporter of liquefied vegetable fuel from January to June 2023 and developed new oil and fuel drilling at a breakneck pace, but that its contributions to weathering financing “remain crucial. “”insufficient in relation to its fair share”.
The United States also remains a leading manufacturer of plastics made from fossil fuels, with factories located in minority and substandard communities. Americans who live near petrochemical plants are 67 percent more likely to be other people of color, and exposure to petrochemicals is linked to adverse fitness effects, especially in children, in addition to cancer and respiratory problems, according to the report.
Schaaf said that as we look ahead to 2024 and beyond, his team is closely following issues similar to climate finance and its relationship to taxation; climate replaces misinformation; and how so-called responses to climate change and biodiversity loss can lead to human rights violations, such as fortress conservation – in which local inhabitants are forcibly evicted from their lands, assaulted or killed as part of biodiversity protection – and some carbon offset schemes.
“This is a time when any and all efforts are made to protect human rights and the environment,” he said.
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